FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 145 



blood which has flowed so long in one distinct chan- 

 nel, and through animals so closely alike in all their 

 properties, that it has acquired a power resembling 

 that of species a power continuously to reproduce 

 animals of the same family and almost the same indi- 

 vidual characteristics. Under this definition the un- 

 sightly ass may have as high and pure blood as the 

 winged courser of Arabia the miserable, hairy, broad- 

 tailed sheep of Asia and Africa, as the far descended 

 Merino of Spain. 



The ram should not only then have a faultless pedi- 

 gree, but, if practicable, be drawn from an old, dis- 

 tinct, well-marked family of Merinos that have been 

 the same as a whole and uniform among themselves 

 for a long course of generations. I used to notice, 

 when I dabbled in crosses between Merinos and coarse 

 breeds, that a ram which was the produce of in-and-in 

 breeding stamped his properties on the mongrel off- 

 spring with peculiar force ; and I am not certain this 

 rule does not obtain to some degree among full bloods. 

 I am inclined to question whether the great cavanas 

 of Spain, some of them once numbering 40,000 sheep, 

 would ever have acquired their remarkable identity 

 of characteristics without that in-and-in breeding to 

 which they were subjected. Some intelligent observer 

 of them in Spain, fifty or sixty years ago, whose name 

 I do not now remember, said that in every hundred 

 there were ten rather better and ten rather worse ones, 

 but that the other eighty could hardly be distinguish- 

 ed one from another. 



The second property I have -noticed in the ram, 

 which gives him the power strongly to impress his 

 qualities on his offspring, is constitutional vigor. He 

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