4: FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



of crossing between varieties and the effects of in-and- 

 in breeding ; the proper mode of selecting a nock ; 

 the art of breeding ; the present course of breeding in 

 the United States ; and suggestions as to the future 

 of the fine wool husbandry in our country. 



The Spanish Merino. 



The origin of this animal is involved in obscurity. 

 The commonly received account is, that Columella, a 

 Roman, who resided near Cadiz, in the reign of 

 Claudius, coupled fine wool Tarentian (Italian) ewes 

 with wild rams brought from Barbary, and thus laid 

 the foundation of the breed; that some thirteen cen- 

 turies after, Pedro IV. of Castile, improved it by a 

 fresh importation of rams from the same country ; and 

 that two hundred years later still, Cardinal Ximenes 

 a third time repeated this ameliorating cross ; from 

 which period, we are left to infer, the breed became 

 established about as it was found when it first began 

 to attract the special attention of foreign nations in 

 the seventeenth century. All the early varieties of 

 Africa had long, straight, hairy wool, like the present 

 long-wooled sheep of England, and no writer, ancient 

 or modern, has pretended that the rams imported from 

 that country into Spain, were any different in this 

 particular. How recurring crosses between such ani- 

 mals and fine-wooled ewes should have commenced, 

 improved, and finally fixed the characteristics of a 

 breed like the Merino, is a problem which admits of 

 no rational solution to a practical sheep breeder.* 



* Strabo, who was a, contemporary of our Saviour, and who conse- 

 quently lived a generation earlier than Columella, says that the fine 



