FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 127 



lar, but that under the same treatment one is com- 

 paratively stiff and hard to the touch, while the other 

 has a silky pliancy and softness, the latter is decidedly 

 the most valuable, because it will produce manufac- 

 tured articles far superior in beauty and for actual 

 use. But in point of fact, full blood wool is almost 

 invariably soft in proportion to its fineness, and is al- 

 ways so in proportion to its marketable value. A 

 practised buyer can decide on that value in the dark. 



Style is, perhaps, a word which has rather vague 

 boundaries to its meaning ; but it includes that com- 

 bination of useful and showy properties which give 

 ^alue to the choicest wool, viz : fineness, clearness of 

 color, lustre, uniformity and beauty of curving, and 

 that peculiar mode of opening on the body, or disposi- 

 tion of the fibres in the sheared fleece, which indicate 

 the last extreme of pliancy and softness. These quali- 

 ties, in combination, present an appearance which at 

 once, without a sufficiently close inspection to discover 

 the separate fibres, or even without a touch of the 

 hand, point out the best fleece in the pile. 



Yolk. This, in its most usual form, is a semi-fluid, 

 unctuous secretion from the skin, found in the wool 

 of various breeds of sheep, and particularly in that of 

 the Merino. Sometimes there is only enough of it to 

 lubricate and make a shining coating on every fibre. 

 In others, it appears additionally in little brilliant 

 globules among the fibres. In others still, it forms a 

 separate, visible and abundant mass in the lower part 

 of the wool. In some instances it is as thin as the 

 most delicate oil ; in others, pasty and viscid ; in 

 others it has the spissitude of soft wax, and appears in 

 particles or even in concretions of considerable size 



