470 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



that on July 4, 1810, a Livingston Merino ram was exhibited at Oamden 

 Court House, on which occasion Lemuel Sawyer, a member of the 

 National House of Bepresentatives from North Carolina, made an 

 address, in which he said: " The introduction of the Merino breaks the 

 last link in the chain of foreign dependence, and is calculated to 

 exalt the destinies of this country beyond the reach of accident or con- 

 trol." 



After a wide range of fact and much metaphor he finally returned to 

 the manufacturing interests and the ram, and called upon the ladies 

 present to "support with their smiles this rising germ of national 

 glory." An opposition paper in commenting upon the address advised 

 by all means the encouragement of the " germ of national glory" by a 

 bevy of ladies drawing themselves up in a row and bestowing their 

 bewitching smiles on an old Merino rani ! 



There were some of the Jarvis importations taken into the State, and 

 some attempt was made to establish the manufacture of fine wool. Of 

 this, however, and the success of the Merino at this period we know 

 less than that of any other State. There were some few Merinos in 

 various parts of the State, but the stock soon ran down to a very low 

 grade. In 1850 there was a revival of wool- growing, and in some coun- 

 ties the number of sheep doubled and wool became an article of export. 

 Granville County reported that most of the winter clothing was made 

 at home and in the dwellings of the people coiild be found carpets as 

 nice as anywhere. Sheep needed no attention in summer and cost but 

 10 cents a head in winter. Some Merino sheep found their way into 

 the State about this time, but the risk from dogs was too great to buy 

 fine-wooled sheep to any extent, and in many sections the dogs were so 

 destructive that farmers abandoned wool-raising and bought their 

 woolen goods at the North. John A. Young in 1878, in a communica- 

 tion to the Department of Agriculture, stated that twenty years' expe- 

 rience in manufacturing the wools grown in the State had familiarized 

 him with the manner in which the sheep had been cared for, and had 

 convinced him that without great natural advantages their utter neglect 

 would long since have exterminated them from the soil. There were 

 but few plantations in the State upon which there was not to be found 

 a flock of sheep intended to be only sufficient to supply the wool neces- 

 sary to clothe the family and furnish an occasional mutton. These 

 sheep were generally the native breed, rarely improved by crosses upon 

 foreign blood. 



As a general rule, these small flocks never entered into their owner's estimate of 

 his valuable property, and they were never so treated. In the spring they were 

 shorn of their fleeces and turned outside their owner's inclosures to seek their 

 summer support in the forests and waste lands over which they chose to roam, and 

 to run the gauntlet for life among hungry hounds arid gaunt curs, almost as numer- 

 ous as themselves. All that might escape, and were able to find their homes in the 

 fall season, and would seek its inhospitalities for the winter, would be admitted 

 within the gates, and permitted to eke out a scanty living in the denuded fields and 



