CHINESE SHEEP. 353 



fecundity of that without ears, brought from London, has 

 not come up to expectation. It first produced only one 

 young one, then three lambs, and again two. The var- 

 iety with ears has produced in the garden of the Impe- 

 rial Society five lambs at a birth, of which only two 

 have survived. 



In Ireland these Chinese sheep are found not to an- 

 swer. The wool is inferior, butchers will not buy the 

 crosses, and the prolific energy is abated by crossing. 

 In England also the last report is unfavourable, unless 

 with reference to some cross - breeds. The Chinese 

 have what we deem an excessive esteem for mutton. 

 From * Memoirs of the Jesuits at Pekin,' long ago, we 

 learn that they thought this esteem well founded ; and 

 they record the fact that the soup and flesh of the 

 sheep are believed to be good for invigorating old peo- 

 ple, students, women worn out by child-bearing, and 

 patients recovering from dysentery. They forbid the 

 liver to be eaten even by the poorest, because of opin- 

 ion that in a hundred sheep more than ninety have dis- 

 eased livers. Believing in the doctrine of the trans- 

 mission of hereditary qualities, it is not comfortable to 

 apprehend an addition to the ills that afflict humanity 

 from the introduction of earless or ear-bearing Ti-yang 

 sheep, with livers in a state of dubious sanity. Upon 

 the whole, with our present measure of light, we do 

 not see our benefit in making very strenuous efforts to 

 acclimatise among us these woolly natives of the Celes- 

 tial Empire. We may well be content to wait the issue 

 of the experiments in France and this all the more 

 readily when we find a member of the Imperial Society 

 energetically protesting to his learned colleagues that 

 their expectations in regard to the Ti-yang sheep are 

 delusive. 



Since 1854 France has succeeded in acclimatising 

 another wool - producing animal, also to be classed 

 among those the acquisition of which to our textile in- 

 dustry should be a matter of interest, we mean the 



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