KAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 167 



ounce raccoon, and 2 ounces rabbit. Both worked up very well. The 

 Merino wool was from Humphreys' half-bloods. 



Early in March, 1810, Col. Humphreys sold 2 rams and 2 ewes for 

 8C,()()0,* and a few weeks later the statement was made that he had 

 sold 4 rams for 80,000, to be taken to Kentucky. Whether these two 

 notices referred to the same sale can not now be determined. About 

 this time, however, the Humphreys sheep were taken into Kentucky. 

 A letter from Lexington, in that State, July 31, 1810, says: 



A flock, consisting of 85 Merino sheep from Col. Humphreys' stock, arrived this 

 \veek at the farm of Col. James Trotter, near this town. Part are full-blooded, and 

 part are from different crosses of our own hreed, and from the high reputation of 

 Col. Humphreys there can he no doubt hut they are as represented. 



Whether this was part of the flock of 176 that reached Marietta, 

 Ohio, on the 9th of that month, in charge of Seth Adams, we can not 

 say. It is more than probable that it was. 



In the summer of 1812, Elihu Ives sold for Col. Humphreys, at Pitts- 

 burg. Pa., or exchanged for wool from Texas, a flock of half-bloods, 

 three fourths, seven-eighths, fifteen- sixteenths, and full-bloods, and in 

 isi;-j Ives closed a bargain for 38,000 pounds of wool from the Province 

 of Texas, and writes of a brother who had gone into Kentucky with 42 

 rams. The wool thus obtained, by exchange of sheep and manufactured 

 goods, was sent east to Humphrey s's mills at Huinphreysville, Conn. 

 These trifling facts may now seem unimportant and not worthy of record, 

 but to the historian and economist they are full of meaning. 



Col. Humphreys bred his flock for a number of years with great suc- 

 cess and satisfaction to himself. The very ones he brought from Spain, 

 he says, increased half a pound in their fleeces; and their descendants 

 continued to improve in that and every other particular. He was 

 assiduous in the improvement of flocks in his own neighborhood and 

 in pushing that improvement into the far west and southwest. It is 

 said by some thai: he disposed of his flock about 1813, through Elihu 

 Ives, as elsewhere related, though the weight of authority is that he 

 retained it until his death in 1818, when causes had sunk the Merinos 

 into contempt and neglect, and his invaluable sheep Avere then scattered, 

 and as a general thing fell into the hands of those who attached no 

 great value to their blood, for there were but two or three instances 

 where they were preserved distinct after 1826. The improvement made 

 by Col. Humphreys was not marked, but that the flock was a marked 

 and very valuable one and a great acquisition to the country admits of 

 no question; from it was procured the foundations of the best flocks of 

 Connecticut, and their success up to 1810 and 1811 prepared the way 

 for the larger importations of these years, and awakened the public to 

 a realization of the great value of the Merino sheep to the wealth and 

 prosperity of the country. 



* New York Gazette, March 16, 1810. 



