EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 151 



fleeces, larger ami much handsomer than most of the native American 

 flocks. 



So far as scarcity of food might operate a change for the worse ill 

 sheep, it could not apply to the Merino when introduced into our coun- 

 try; because, not requiring better pastures than our own sheep, there 

 was no reason for the change of size, at least such change as the wool 

 of the British sheep had undergone when introduced; this was a change 

 in the quantity rather than in the quality. When a sheep diminished 

 in si/.c, it would have been a very unwise provision of nature to have 

 suffered it to have carried the same quantity of wool which it had borne 

 upon a larger and stronger carcass; its wool, therefore, diminished in 

 length in the same manner that its carcass did in size; but the quality 

 of the wool remained the same, or, if anything, changed for the better. 

 So if the large and improved breed of Merinos were kept upon very 

 scanty pastures, they would diminish in size and carry shorter fleeces; 

 1 >ut those fleeces, even under the worst keeping, would still retain all 

 their original properties. We are often told of the influence of climate 

 in effecting changes; that it operates is believed though it operates 

 very slowly, but until experience has determined the fact it is not always 

 possible to say whether that operation be for the better or for the worse. 

 Livingston believed and experience has confirmed the fact that the 

 change in the Merino sheep taken into any northern country, provided 

 they were plentifully fed, would be for the better, and particularly when 

 brought into Xew York, where the pastures were good, the air and 

 waters pure, the winters cold, and the summer range furnished with 

 shade. The Merino differs essentially from all other sheep, and even 

 from all other quadrupeds of which we have any knowledge, as an an- 

 nual does from a perennial plant. All quadrupeds change their coats 

 every year, and indeed generally twice a year ; the Merino sheep never 

 changes his coat; on the contrary it will continue to grow from year to 

 year, and at the end of the third year the fleece will yield a three-year 

 crop, with little or no diminution. This experiment has been tried in 

 France, in Switzerland, and in England, for the course of three years 

 successively, and always with the same result. The wool of this sheep 

 then resembles in its duration human hair, and may probably be sub- 

 ject to the same physical laws. Human hair is affected by the tissue 

 of the skin through which it passes. In warm climates the hair of man 

 is generally black and coarse; in colder ones we find flaxen, yellow, and 

 various shades of brown to be the prevalent colors; and even where 

 the hair takes a deeper shade it is finer than the lank black hair of the 

 South. May not this be owing in some sort to the skin being more 

 braced in one and more lax in the other? And will it not produce the 



(same effect upon the wool of an animal whose fleece is perennial, par- 

 ticularly if the food and air invigorate at the very time that the climate 

 I braces the fibers? It is said that the wool of the common sheep is 

 I sometimes coarser, as he is either well or ill fed. This may happen if 



