BREEDS OF SHEEP. 81 



where, to be disposed of to drovers, or to farmers themselves who 

 are seeking a supply of store sheep. This would give an oppor- 

 tunity of increasing the supply of long wool, so much needed, and 

 of decreasing that of fine wool now too plentiful to maintain prices 

 satisfactory to fine wool growers. The season for marketing these 

 sheep would be hi August and September, the time in which they 

 are most in demand, and one in which the western pastures gener- 

 ally fail. It may be that in a few years, at some or all of these 

 points, and many others, there may yet be seen great sheep mar- 

 kets at stated periods, something like those of Ireland, Scotland, or 

 England, at which 40,000 to 80,000 sheep are offered for sale, and 

 bought and paid for in a couple of days. When sheep breeding 

 becomes fully developed in America, these markets will probably 

 have been found needful, and have grown and developed from 

 necessity, as has been the case elsewhere, and such an economical 

 and convenient division of labor as this may become a regular and 

 systematic part of the business of sheep farming. 



CHAPTER V. 



BREEDING AND BREEDS OF SHEEP. 



The strength and vigor that results from the fixity of type, 

 which is so marked a characteristic of wild races of animals, come 

 through what is called the natural selection of parents. It is the 

 natural force and strength of the most vigorous in perpetuating 

 their kind, together with the hardening influences of exposure, 

 which give them their strong constitution and great power to 

 resist misfortune. The race is perpetuated only by the strongest, 

 because weaker members perish from the hardships necessarily 

 borne by a wild race, or are driven off or destroyed in the desper- 

 ate conflicts which occur between the males at the breeding season. 

 To gain strength and vigor, the most skillful breeder could follow 

 no more effective course than the one here indicated. The natural 

 power possessed by the thoroughbred male animal to transmit his 

 qualities, which power is recognized amongst breeders by the 

 term " prepotency," fixes the type of the race which through this 

 influence becomes homogeneous ; every member presenting exactly 

 the same character in form and habit. But when a race of ani- 



