FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 159 



partly for wool-growing purposes, it is more profitable 

 to grow full blood Merinos. In the State of New 

 York we could, by the substitution of fine, heavy 

 fleeces for those now carried by our grade sheep, profit- 

 ably grow 200 per cent, more of mutton in the wool- 

 growing districts than we now do. 



I shall nowhere*7however, be understood to advance 

 the idea that it would be advisable in the mutton dis- 

 tricts proper (where access to a good market is quick 

 and cheap) to substitute the Merino for the best Eng- 

 lish mutton varieties. Though I am not prepared 

 to speak from adequate experience on that point, the 

 tenor of reliable testimony would seem to be clearly 

 the other way. 



For mutton purposes the Merino can promptly and 

 readily be rendered more valuable than it now is 

 without a diminution of the quality and quantity of 

 its wool. It probably could not be made to assume 

 so early a maturity as the New Leicester or the South 

 Down, or their peculiar forms ; but Prof. Wilson has 

 told us what the pure Merino will weigh at two years 

 old, when fed as the other English breeds are which 

 exhibit such marvellous earliness of maturity. Early 

 feeding and early maturity have an inseparable con- 

 nection ; and those who have bred English New Leices- 

 ter sheep, and fed them only hay and grass, and treat- 

 ed them as we treat our other sheep, have found that 

 much of their early maturity has vanished. But 

 without reference to this consideration, we have not, 

 in a country so large in proportion to its population, 

 and where it is so easy consequently to supply the de- 

 mands of its meat market without killing animals at 

 an early age, occasion, certainly in large portions of 



