SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 321 



LETTER 11. 



EFFECT OF CLIMATE, CONTINUED. 



Kffcct of Climate on quality of Wool ... Warmth of Climate rendeiu Wool coarser — Reasons. . .Effect of 

 Herbage. ..Opinions of Youatt — Doclor Parry — F^nglish Staplers — VVnter...Can the tendency to grow 

 coarser be resisted?. . .Opinions of Yountt — Lasteyrie — Mr. Lawrence. . .Experiment in Australia — Cape of 

 •Good Hope — riouth of Illinois — Kentucky — Tennessee — Mississippi— New-York. . .Warm Climates render 

 Wools softer and Ionizer, ilius adding materially to their value. ..Proved to be the case in Australia. ..Tes- 

 timony of Enelish Wool.futtors and Staplers. ..Same eftect produced in the United .States. . .Testimony 

 of Mr. Cockiill. 



Dear Sir : We come now to discuss the effect of Climate on the quality 

 of Wool. 



There can be but little iloubt, other things being equal, that the pelage 

 of the Sheej) and some other animals, becomes finer in cold climates and 

 coarser in warm ones. This is usually attributed, by theoretical writers, 

 to the effect of cold and heat in contracting or expanding the pores. This 

 may have some effect, but to suppose that the delicate tissues of the skin 

 can act, to any great extent, mechanically, in compressing the harder and 

 highly clastic ones of the hair or wool, or compel their attenuation so as 

 to permit their escape through diminished apertures, like the process of 

 wire drawing, is, it seems to me, to assume that matter acts contrary to 

 its ordinary laws. I am rather disposed to look for the causes of this 

 phenomenon, in the amount and quality of the nutriment received by the 

 animal. It was stated, in my preceding letter, that warm climates, by 

 affording succulent herbage during a greater portion of the year, maintain 

 in greater activity those secretions which form wool, and thus increase the 

 quantity or weight of the fleece. The weight is increased by increasing 

 the length and thickness of the separate fibres, just as plants put forth 

 longer and thicker stems on rich soils than on poor ones. 



Mr. Youatt, in his excellent and much quoted work on Sheep, after dis- 

 cussing and admitting, to a certain extent, the influence of warm temper- 

 atures in rendering wool coarser, says : 



" Pasture has a far greater influence on the fineness of tlie fleece. The staple of the wool, 

 like every other part of the sheep, must increase in length or in bulk when the animal has 

 a superabundance of nutiiment ; and, on the other hand, the secretion which forms the wool 

 must decrease like every otlier, when .sufficietit nourishint nt is not afforded. When little 

 cold hits been experienced in tlie winter, and vegetation has been scarcely checked, the 

 sheep yield an abundant crop of wool, but the fleece is perceptiljly coarser as well as 

 heavier. When frost has been severe and the ground long covered with snow — if the flock 

 has been fairly supplied with nutriment, although the fleece may have lost a little in weight, 

 it will have acquired a superior degree of fineness and a proportionate increase of value. 

 Should, however, the sheep have been neglected and stai-ved during this prolongation of 

 cold weather, the fleece as well as the carcass is thinner : and although it may have pre- 

 served its smallness of filament, it has lost in weight and strength and usefubiess. These 

 are self-evident facts, and need not be enforced by any labored argument."* 



Doct. Parry, a coirect and able English writer, remarks : 

 " Sheep breeders have observed a sort of gross connection between the food and quality 

 of the fleece. . . . The fineness of a sheep's fleece of a given breed is, within certain 

 limits, inversely as its fatness, and perhaps alsn (although I am not certain on this point) as 

 the quickness with which it grows fat. A sheep which is fat has usually comparatively- 

 coarse wool, and one wliic^a is lean, either fi-om wtuit of food or disease, has the finest wool ; 

 and the vciy same sheep may at diflerent times, according to these ciicumstiuices, have 

 fleeces of all the intermediate cpialities from extreme fineness to compaxcitive coarseness." 



* Vouatt on Sheep, p. 70, 



(657) ai 



