148 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



he will not attain for many years. This choice will be 

 influenced by two prime considerations, the length of 

 his purse and the size of his holding. If a man has 

 a limited purse and a large run, anything over 30,000 

 acres, he almost must of necessity stock his land with 

 native ewes which will cost him from 5^. to js. 6d. per 

 head rather than import a pure bred flock at an 

 average price of £2. On the other hand, if he has 

 a run of but 5,000 acres, and also a well-filled pocket, 

 he will get the best and quickest results of full 

 development by importation. With pure bred merinos 

 there is no question of deterioration ; on the contrary, 

 they more than maintain their vigour, and the wool 

 improves both in weight and quality. It has already 

 fetched n^d. a pound. Up to the present date 

 almost without exception the pockets of our sheep- 

 farmers have not been lined in full proportion to their 

 acreage ; they have had, in fact, more mud than 

 money. Without attempting to offer a table of com- 

 parative results from these two methods, which would 

 be affected by the price of wool in the home market, 

 by the local price for ram lambs and still more by the 

 capacity and value of the farm, the fact remains that 

 in almost every case farmers have been content to 

 use the native ewe as their basis, relying on their 

 wethers to pay expenses, and anticipating in the 

 ultimate wool clip from the graded ewe flock the profit 

 which previous results have indicated. Their reasons 

 have been that the small capital available for stock 

 was more safely invested over a large number of 

 animals at the lower price acclimatised to the country 

 than in imported stock. Grazing cost practically 

 nothing and herd boys could be trusted more safely 

 with the lower priced animals. In any case there 



