156 MERINO SHEEP 



turn are hooded like falcons, that they may do 

 no harm to each other and their peaceable com- 

 rades. A blow might cost their owner a thousand 

 dollars. 



The successful sheep-breeder is up to his knees 

 in clover, but the eastern wool-grower is on barren 

 ground. A friend who lives in the heart of the 

 Vermont sheep-breeding region writes me: "Or- 

 dinary rams sell for from ten dollars to twenty- 

 five dollars a head; ordinary ewes for twenty dol- 

 lars. The highest real price any one has known a 

 ram to sell for within two years, eleven hundred 

 dollars; the same for ewes, three hundred dollars. 

 The wool of these sheep sells for twenty cents a 

 pound. The wool itself does not pay for growing 

 in the way in which these sheep are reared and 

 cared for. The wool is a secondary object; the 

 bodies are what they are bred for. ... In the way 

 sheep are kept on the large ranches southwest and 

 west, the sheep so soon deteriorate that they are 

 obliged to have thorough-bred rams to keep up 

 their flocks. This is particularly the case in warm 

 climates. Nature gets rid of the superfluous cloth- 

 ing as soon as possible." 



It is interesting to compare the portraits of the 

 best Merinos of eighty years ago with the improved 

 American Merinos of the present day, and see 

 what a change has been wrought in the race with- 

 out change of blood. It is not unUkely that to the 



