CHAPTER XVIII. 



NEGRETTE MERINO SHEEP. 



HE accompanying engraving, from a drawing by Mr. 

 Harrison Weir, represents most faithfully three 

 specimens (two rams and a ewe) of the famed fine- 

 wool-producing Negrette merino. Their skin hanging 

 in folds as if too large for their frames, with wool close as 

 it can grow, down to their very hoofs, and their faces well 

 covered, stamp them as animals intended by nature to grow 

 wool. 



The merino does not pay for feeding artificially like other 

 breeds ; he will produce wool on the worst of grass, and when 

 well fed will do little more. The quality of the wool deteriorates 

 in proportion as he is overfed, and very little is gained in mutton, 

 the nature of the merino being to secrete on the kidneys the 

 surplus fat ; so that, although producing very good and juicy 

 meat, the merino will not yield fat mutton, nature having 

 evidently intended him for a wool-producing animal. 



The Negrette merino is a native of Spain, and his fine wool was 

 at one time so great a source of revenue to the Spaniards, that 

 no merino was allowed to be exported from Spain without tlie 

 licence of the king, under the extremest penalties — at one time 

 even that of death. The following account of how they were 

 introduced into this country may be of interest, as also may some 

 particulars of sales of merinos, taken from old agricultural 

 magazines. 



King George the Third, as is well known, was an ardent agri- 

 culturist, and, being determined to try the celebrated Negrette 

 merinos on his own farm, he in the year 1787 took measures for 

 the collection and importation of a few. It was a kind of smug- 



