284 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Mr. Jarvis made his cross with the Saxon Merino in 1826. On May 



4, of that year, George and Thomas Searle, of Boston, sold at Brighton 

 321 Saxony sheep and 58 lambs. Of these Mr. Jarvis purchased over 

 50, at prices ranging from $32.50 to $137.50 each. He crossed the Saxon 

 rams with the larger portion of his Spanish flock. Fortunately a hun- 

 dred of the best Merino ewes were selected and bred to Spanish Merino 

 rams only, thus preserving the best portion of his flock pure and un- 

 mixed with the Saxon. Later, about 1831 or 1832, Mr. Jarvis, finding 

 the Saxon much less profitable and hardy than the Spanish Merino, se- 

 lected outthe Merino ewes that were left of those which had been crossed 

 with the Saxon and again bred them to Merino rams, thereafter breed- 

 ing only to Merino rams and their crosses. 



About the time he began his crossing with the Saxon (1826), Mr. 

 Jarvis found in an old trunk about twenty samples of wool which had 

 been sent him from Spain in 1810, and which had been carefully se- 

 cured in paper and labeled. He went into his yard and clipped off 

 about a dozen samples and compared the two, and was satisfied his 

 flock had improved upon the original stock, and good judges pronounced 

 his to be the best wool. His sheep then averaged 3 pounds 14 ounces 

 of wool well washed on the sheep's back. 



It is generally admitted that Mr. Jarvis improved the quality of the 

 fleece from the original Spanish type, but evidence is wanting to prove 

 that he made any material improvement in any other direction. Henry 



5. Randall believed that Mr. Jarvis was too willing to please the manu- 

 facturers, and bred out to too great extent the folds and oil from his 

 flocks. 



It is possible [says Albert Chapman] that he may have increased the size of his 

 sheep, and thus preserved on his pure Merinos the average weight of their fleeces, 

 but if he increased their size he could not have preserved the relative per centum of 

 wool to their live weight, for he only claimed in 1835 that the full-blood Merino part 

 of the flock did not materially vary from the original weight. If he improved the 

 form he hardly kept pace with Atwood, Cock, and Rich, as the selections from his 

 flock from 1835 to 1844 were not equal to those from the other flocks. 



The practice of putting a ram " with 25 to 35 ewes," instead of coup- 

 ling each with a view to individual improvement or to remedy individual 

 defects, as has been practiced by the best breeders in later years, would 

 probably account for the failure to reach the maximum of possible 

 improvement. But if Consul Jarvis fell short of the highest success as 

 a practical breeder and improver of Merino sheep attained by some other 

 breeders of his and later times, none excelled him as a noble, public- 

 spirited man, one entirely above the petty claptrap that belittles the 

 character of any breeder that practices it. His noble treatment of other 

 importers in his later writings, some of whom had endeavored to defame 

 the stock he imported, shows him to have been of too noble a nature to 

 have remembered aught of hatred and malice, and although the greatest 

 public service he performed for the United States was in importing such 

 vast numbers of sheep from the best cabanas in Spain, it was not the 



