INTRODUCTION. 9 



geration. Facts subsequently ascertained, have, it cannot be denied, materially 

 changed the impressions of our flock-masters on this subject. Whether correctly 

 or incorrectly, they no longer fear Western competition in growing fine wool. My 

 own coincides with the popular impression on this topic, if we consider that com- 

 petition in its relations to a period, not far distant in the future. 



The adoption of these views led me to again turn my attention, never entirely 

 withdrawn, more particularly to the capabilities of the South for this branch of hus- 

 bandry. ' My conclusions and the reasons for them will be found in the following 

 Letters. In a letter to Hon. Robfert J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, pub- 

 lished in his Treasury Report of 1845, and in a series of letters published in tho 

 Virginia " Valley Farmer," the same year, I stated some of the general conclu- 

 sions I had then arrived at on this topic. These publications were followed by 

 letters from gentlemen residing in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, 

 Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, making farther inquiries, and usually impart- 

 ing more or less local information on the subject. Some of these were practical 

 men, only seeking information on practical points ; others, eminent for intelligence 

 and legislative experience, embraced a more comprehensive field of investigation, 

 and sought from me, as probably from other, sources, to ascertain by a wide range 

 of general facts and statistics, the probable bearing, now and in future, of an exten- 

 sive system of wool-growing on the Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, domes- 

 tic consumption in short, the whole domestic economy of our Southern States. 



Answers to these questions demanded careful investigation, and involved a greai 

 variety and complexity of details in the practical department of the subject, ren- 

 dered -far more numerous by the wide differences existing between the soils, esta- 

 blished husbandry, and even the climates, of the three distinct and well-defined 

 zones already alluded to. The location of some of my correspondents was on the 

 mountains of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee others on the hilly zone of 

 the same States others on the Tertiary sands of the tide-water zone, and the Cre- 

 taceous plains of the Mississippi and Arkansas. To give opinions on all the topics 

 referred to, and in reference to natural circumstances so various, supported by even 

 a respectable show of corroborating facts, was an undertaking requiring considera- 

 ble time and labor : to repeat them separately to each correspondent, was wholly 

 out of the question. 



Requested by Mr. Skinner, a little more than a year since, to prepare a series of 

 Letters on Sheep Husbandry, and especially on Sheep Husbandry in the South, for 

 The Farmers' Library, it occurred to me that a compliance with his request would 

 snable me to answer each of my correspondents by once writing; and moreover, I 

 could feel, under such circumstances, that I could properly afford to bestow an 

 amount of time and elaboration on my communications which I should otherwise 

 find impracticable. And I confess, I also thought if the information I could impart 

 would prove of value to my personal correspondents, it might also prove so to many 

 others among the numerous readers of a popular agricultural magazine. The liberal 

 offer of the Publishers to provide all such cuts as I should choose to direct, was an 

 additional inducement to adopt this medium of communication. I have often felt 

 the want of these in agricultural letters of my own, and in reading the works of 

 others. In describing a breed of sheep, for example, to a person who has never 

 seen them, the best chosen words convey but a vague impression. In many other 

 cases also, cuts exhibit at a glance what it would require much circumlocution to 

 describe ; and they in many instances convey ideas to the mind with a definiteness,, 

 correctness, and exemption from possibility of misunderstanding, which worda 

 alone never could. The cuts include portraits of all the breeds which I supposed 

 could of possibility possess, or claim to possess, superior value, for any region 01 



B 



