TO FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



blood Merinos yielded about 4 Ibs. of wool per liead. 

 And persons who obtained small choice lots of him, 

 from the period of 1835, could obtain ewes yielding 

 nearly or quite 4^ Ibs. per head. In 1835, Francis 

 Rotch, the celebrated cattle and sheep breeder of 

 Morris (then Louisville), JSTew York, published the 

 statement that his flock of Spanish Merinos yielded 

 an average of 4| Ibs. of " well washed wool." My own 

 flock, larger than Mr. Rotch's, yielded an equal amount. 

 This was also undoubtedly true of the flock of Stephen 

 Atwood, of Woodbury, Connecticut ; of John T. Rich, 

 of Shoreham, Vermont ; and of many other flocks de- 

 scended from those of the two last named gentlemen. 

 And the Spanish sheep, then the subject of great 

 attention and of attention directed especially towards 

 increase of fleece was rapidly adding to the disparity 

 between itself and the Saxon in this particular. In 

 1844, 1 purchased a small lot of Rich ewes in Yer- 

 mont which yielded an average of 5 Ibs. of washed 

 wool at a year old. The same year, a little flock of 

 thirty (descended from Colonel Humphreys' sheep), 

 yielded me an average of 5 Ibs. 13| oz. of washed 

 wool.* 



* Two of the number were raras, and four of the ewes had two 

 years' fleeces on; but, on the other hand, a portion of them were 

 yearlings and two year olds, which yeaned at the customary time, and 

 treated in the customary way in ' my flock, always fall considerably 

 short of the fleeces of grown sheep. My impression at the time was, 

 that the fleeces of the twenty-eight ewes, including the double ones, 

 did not weigh more than would the fleeces of the same sheep at three 

 or four years old, without any double ones. The sheep were not 

 housed except in winter, and were wholly unpampered. See my de- 

 tailed statement of their keep, &c., in Transactions N. T. State Agri- 

 cultural Society, 1844. They drew the first premium of the Society 

 for best managed flock. 



