MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 13 



III introduced the Merino into England, but it never found 

 much favor there with the British agriculturist. There is still 

 existing in England a flock which is a straight descendant from 

 this king's flock. 



The first Merinos introduced into Australia came from the 

 Cape of Good Hope in 1797. . One writer, however, gives it as his 

 opinion that no pure bred Merinos were imported into that col- 

 ony before the arrival of the Argo lot, purchased at King George 

 the Fourth's sale in June, 1805. 



Worlidge, the author of "Systema Agriculturae," whose work 

 was published in 1675, says of sheep : "Next unto these, the sheep 

 deserves the chiefest place, and is by some preferred before any 

 other, for the great profit and advantage they bring to mankinde, 

 both for food and apparel. Whereof there are divers sorts, some 



Indian Sheep. Photo by Doctor Arbuckle. 



bearing much finer wooll than others; as the Herefordshire sheep 

 about Leicester bear the fairest fleeces of any in England. Also 

 they are of several kinds, as to their proportions; some are very 

 small, others larger. But the Dutch sheep are the largest of all, 

 being much bigger than any 1 have seen in England, and yearly 

 bear two "or three lambs at a time. It is also reported that they 

 sometimes bear lambs twice in the year. It may doubtless be of 

 very good advantage to obtain of those kindes ; -and also of Span- 

 ish sheep that bear such fine fleeces." 



No breed of domestic sheep is indigenous to the United 

 States. The first domestic sheep to reach this country came to 

 New Mexico with Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540. Fifty 

 years later the Merino was introduced by Juan de Oriate. Governor 

 Charves, the first ruler of New Mexico under the Mexican Eepublic, 

 is quoted as having had a million sheep which were herded by 

 twenty-seven herders. It would seem that the Navajo tribe of 



