HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 



At that time the wool- 

 len mills of England were 

 supplied with the finer sorts 

 of wool from Saxony and 

 Spain, where the merino 

 sheep had been highly cul- 

 tivated. But although the 

 Saxons and the Spaniards 

 possessed the finest breed 

 of sheep in the world, they 

 were not large wool-growers, 

 and consequently the supply 

 of wool in the English 

 market was very limited. 

 The first thing to be clone 

 was to introduce the proper 

 breed of sheep, not an easy 

 matter in those days, when 

 the pure merino was a rare 

 animal every-where except in 

 Saxony and in Spain. 



When Governor Phillip 

 landed in 1 788, he brought 

 ashore with him twenty-nine 

 sheep, which he had taken 

 on board at the Cape of 

 Good Hope ; and when he 

 left the colony in 1 792, the 

 little Hock had increased to 

 one hundred and five. It 

 was in the following year 

 that Macarthur commenced 

 his operations. The story 

 will be best told in his own 

 words, as we find them in 

 the report of his evidence 

 before Mr. Commissioner 

 Bigge in 1820: "In 1794, 

 I purchased from an officer 

 sixty Bengal ewes and 

 lambs, which had been im- 

 ported from Calcutta, and very soon afterwards I procured from the captain of a 

 transport from Ireland, two Irish ewes and a young ram. The Indian sheep produced 

 coarse hair, and the wool of the Irish sheep was then valued at no more than ninepence 



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