FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 95 



and if the weather be warm, the American fleece 

 again becomes lubricated and " weighted" with yolk, 

 while the French fleece remains almost as dry as 

 cotton. 



In one respect, certainly the American fleece de- 

 rives a purely legitimate advantage from these facts. 

 "With the rapid return of the yolk comes the rapid 

 return of lustre and the characteristic silkiness of 

 handling so much prized by -buyers. 



I am inclined to believe that wholly independently 

 of all extraneous matter, the actual fibre of the Amer- 

 ican wool, if we could weigh exactly equal quanti- 

 ties of each, would be found heaviest. The bones, 

 muscles, skin, and other animal tissues of a small 

 animal, even of the same species, are less porous and, 

 to use the familiar term, finer-grained than those of 

 animals fifty per cent, larger. Wool and hair closely 

 assimilate in their organic constituents with these sub- 

 stances.* I know no reason, therefore, why an anal- 

 ogous decrease of density should not extend to the 

 wool and hair of the larger animal. 



But without taking such refinements into the ac- 

 count, and to sum up the matter, the American far 

 excels the French Merino in the combined production 

 of wool and yolk / and as yolk is allowed to be a 

 marketable commodity, the mass of our farmers pre- 



* Analyses made by Liebig, Johnston, Scherer, Playfair, Boeckman, 

 and Mulder, prove that the organic part of wool, hair, skin, nails, horns, 

 feathers, lean meat, blood, etc., are very nearly the same. The or- 

 ganic part of wool, according to Johnston, consists of carbon 50.65 ; 

 hydrogen, 7.03; nitrogen, 17.71; oxygen and sulphur, 24.61. The 

 inorganic constituents are small. "When burned it leaves but 2.0 per 

 cent, of ash. (See Liebig' s Agricultural Chemistry, Appendix; and 

 Johnston's Agricultural Chemistry, Lecture XVIII.} 



