SHEEP AND THEIR MANAGEMENT. 189 



ted States to wash it ; and probably four pounds of 

 clean wool would be as high as the maximum aver- 

 age in the choicest flocks. Few overgo three and a 

 half. 



The Merino, though the native of a warm climate, 

 becomes readily inured to the greatest extremes of 

 cold, flourishing as far north as Sweden, without de- 

 generating in fleece or form.* It is a patient, docile 

 animal, bearing much confinement without injury to 

 health, and we never have been enabled to discover 

 in it that peculiar "voraciousness of appetite" as- 

 cribed to it by English writers. f Accurately con- 

 ducted experiments have shown that it consumes 

 two pounds of hay per diem in winter ; the Leices- 

 ter consumes from three and a half to four ; and the 

 common wooled American sheep would not probably 

 fall short of three. The mutton of the Merino, in 

 spite of the prejudice which exists on the subject, is 

 short-grained anA of good flavour when killed at a 

 proper age, and weighs from eight to ten pounds to 

 the quarter. It is remarkable for its longevity, re- 

 taining its teeth and continuing to breed two or three 

 years longer than the common sheep or the im- 

 proved English breeds ; but it should be remarked in 

 connexion with this fact, that it is correspondingly 

 slow in arriving at maturity. It does not attain its 

 full growth before three years, and the ewes in the 

 best-managed flocks are rarely permitted to breed 

 before they reach that age. The Merino is not a 

 good breeder, the bearing ewes giving little milk, and 

 sometimes neglecting their lambs. Eighty per cent, 

 would probably be as high as the average number of 

 lambs usually reare:!. 



We have already adverted to the cross between 

 the Merino and the native sheep. On the introduc- 

 tion of the Saxon family of the Merinos, they were 

 universally ingrafted on the parent stock, and the 



* Lasteyrie. t " Farmer's Series," Sheep, p. 1 19. 



