192 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



indicate better feeding properties. The Spanish 

 shepherd is little changed from what he was 111 the 

 days of Cardinal Ximenes or Pedro IV. ; with much 

 practical knowledge of his business, but never dream- 

 ing of improvement ; and his knowledge strangely 

 blended with prejudices as ancient as the pedigrees 

 of his sheep, running back to a period when Spain 

 was a Roman province. He is not the owner of llic 

 sheep under his care, but the ill-paid servant of a titled 

 family or a religious order, who, in nine cases out 

 of ten, are no more disposed or more competent to 

 carry out a system for the improvement of their 

 flocks than himself. And, finally, the Spanish cus- 

 tom of pasturing their sheep during the entire sea- 

 son in large flocks, without enclosures,* to render 

 the necessary divisions practicable, entirely prevents 

 that nice adaptation to each other of the male and 

 female selected for breeding ; that counterbalancing 

 of the defects of one parent by the marked excel- 

 lence of the other in the same points, which exhib- 

 its the skill of the modern breeder. In Saxony, and 

 the other states of Germany, the case is far other- 

 wise. The electoral flocks, the parent stem, are un- 

 der the direction of commissioners appointed for 

 their intelligence and their knowledge of the sub- 

 ject ; and the noted private flocks employ the first 

 agricultural skill of ihe Saxon landholders. The 

 low price of labour, too, admits of a degree of atten- 

 tion and constant care over their flocks unknown 

 in other countries. The attention bestowed upon 

 breeding may be inferred from- the fact, that in many 

 of the largest flocks, every individual sheep is num- 

 bei^d and registered, its pedigree known, and its off- 

 spring recorded. The number and age of the sheep 



* Neither are there enclosures in Saxony ; hut the division is 

 effected by the bucks being placed in pen>, and the ewes classi- 

 fied and nwrked. The ewes are from tune to time driven in the 

 yard around the pens, and when the teaser has selected one, it 

 placed in the pen of the buck for which it is marked. 



