EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 



Scale of points adopted by the association. 



515 



These families of sheep and their crosses are very popular in western 

 Pennsylvania, Virginia, and southeastern Ohio, and for a general-pur- 

 pose sheep are attracting considerable attention. They are a large, 

 long, and plain sheep, with good feet and great vigor. They are very 

 healthy and full of vitality. By some they are likened to the South- 

 down in size and symmetry, with a Merino fleece covering them. By 

 others they are found to resemble the French Merino in size and sym- 

 metry, early maturity, feeding qualities, and in fleece products. They 

 bear a fine wool of a longer staple than the Merinos of Vermont, west- 

 ern i^ew York, and northern Ohio, wool that sells for 2 or 3 cents per 

 pound more than the wool from these States. By many they are held 

 to be the truest representatives of the American Merino. That which 

 now particularly recommends them is their capacity to produce a good 

 fleece and good mutton. Their modification from a solely wool-bearing 

 sheep to the mutton type has been going on for many years in the 

 hands of careful, thinking, and progressive breeders. Merinos that 

 showed mutton characteristics of a high order have been seized upon 

 and by careful selection those characteristics have been perpetuated 

 and made permanent. 



There still lingers in Washington County another family of sheep 

 which holds a place peculiarly its own the Saxony and it is repre- 

 sented by a register. The breeders of this improved Saxony, so called, 

 base their claims to merit more on what their sheep are since they have 

 become Americanized than on what they were in Saxony. Singularly 

 enough the foundation of many of these flocks, and the leading one of 

 the Improved Saxony Kegister, traces to the E. W. Meade importation 

 of the Spanish Merino. 



When the Meade importation, or some of the flocks descended from 

 it. were being driven from the vicinity of Philadelphia westward, Jo- 

 seph Clark, who had purchased Merinos as early as 1810, went, in com- 

 pany with William Brownlee, as far as Uniontown, Fayette County, and 

 purchased from the .Meade flock 1 ram and 10 ewes, paying for the ram 



