152 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



he is either sickly or in full health, or if the weather is more or less cold 

 when the young wool protrudes through the skin; if in that state it is 

 compressed it will be fine; if it finds an easy passage it will be coarse; 

 and, as the wool of common sheep is an annual production, it may fre- 

 quently vary. But the fleece which never falls off must be subject to 

 very few changes; it may be longer or shorter, but the root being the 

 same it will probably be liable to no changes but such as arise from the 

 greater or less compression of the skin through which it passes. Cold, 

 then, will have a tendency to render the wool fine, heat and moisture 

 to make it coarse. 



The marten, the gray squirrel, the common fox, etc., have much finer 

 fur in Siberia and Hudson Bay than they have in Virginia or Penn- 

 sylvania, and yet they are exactly the same animal. We find an exact 

 analogy between the effect of climate upon the covering of sheep and 

 that of other quadrupeds. The sheep under the line are hairy; as you 

 go north they become woolly, and further north the wool is finest; the 

 best wool in Germany is that of Saxony. The moist climate of England 

 and Ireland produces long and coarse wool. It is true that fine wool 

 is also found in Persia, in Cashmere, and Thibet, but this is only in the 

 very cold and mountainous parts of those countries. The sheep of 

 Siberia are coarse-haired, but they have below that hair a coat of ex- 

 tremely fine wool ; they are the Moufflon, or Argali, almost in their native 

 state, in which man has taken little pains to cultivate the wool at the 

 expense of the hair, but permitted them to grow together; and, indeed, 

 in that state it is best adapted to the wants of the inhabitants, who 

 know not the use of the loom, but wear the skin of the sheep, in which 

 case the hair is as useful as the wool; for it protects them as it did its 

 original owner against rain and snow, which would penetrate the wool 

 were it not covered by a surtout of hair. It is then probable that the 

 Merino sheep does not owe its peculiar excellence to the climate of 

 Spain, or to the mode of treatment. Spain contains a great number of 

 long-wooled sheep, in every respect different from the Merino; the cli- 

 mate has had no effect in meliorating their fleeces; the migration does 

 not contribute to it. They have in various parts of Spain, and particu- 

 larly in Estremadura, Merinos that never migrate, and whose wool is 

 not inferior to that of the migratory sheep; and they have both in 

 Erance and Italy migrating sheep whose wool is not fine. 



To this condensed argument of Livingston for the value of the Merino 

 and its proof against deterioration it may be stated that although his 

 own sheep were only introduced in 1802 they had improved in seven 

 years in size, beauty of form, and quantity and quality of the fleece. 

 The first two improvements were too obvious to admit of the least doubt; 

 the last required so nice a discrimination as to make the decision more 

 difficult in all but one instance, where the difference was so striking as 

 to be evident to every observer. This was the case of a ram lamb of 

 1808 out of an imported ewe, while his sire (also by the same dam) was 



