1 2 MODERN SHEEP I BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



world's history." "In 'cave deposits, in England, have been found 

 the bones of sheep in company with those of the hyena, and in 

 some cases extinct animals, showing that they existed ages before 

 the invasion of England by the Romans. No doubt the sheep 

 has figured in supplying clothing and food for man for a very 

 long time, and no other animal is doing more toward his com- 

 fort than it is today. The Bible tells us that Abel was a keeper 

 of sheep, and we read of Abraham's vast flocks and those of other 

 patriarchs. We learn that the first woolen goods were manufac- 

 tured in Asia two thousand years before the Christian era. The 

 first English woolen mills were established by the Romans at 

 Winchester. 



Until the 18th century sheep were kept principally for their 

 wool and milk. We read that fine-wooled sheep were raised ex- 

 tensively in Spain before the Christian era, and for centuries the 

 Spanish Merinos were divided into provincial varieties which. dif- 

 fered in sympathy with the care they got and the climatic condi- 

 tions with which they were surrounded. 



The flocks of Spain were divided into two classes the travel- 

 ing and the stationary. The traveling flocks were considered the 

 more valuable. Some of these sheep were taken to Saxony in 

 1765 and these formed the foundation of the famous Saxony sheep 

 famed for the extreme fineness of their fleece. These traveling 

 flocks (according to a traveler whose identity can not be placed by 

 the author, but to whom he would be pleased to give due credit were 

 it possible) belonged to great nobles and certain religious houses. 

 They are traceable back to the year 1350, when the plague had 

 desolated Spain, destroying two-thirds of the population. These 

 flocks are driven north into the mountains in summer, and when 

 winter returns they pasture homeward again. When traveling they 

 may feed on wastes and commons, but passing through cultivated 

 country must be confined to a recognized track. In the barren dis- 

 tricts a flock is made to travel at the rate of six or seven leagues 

 a day, but where pasture is to be had they are suffered to move 

 very slowly. It is to the claims of the Merino flock (to public 

 grazing) that some political writers have attributed the want of 

 cultivation in the interior provinces of Spain. 



History states that the native Spanish sheep was a very indif- 

 ferent animal until improved by crossing with the Cotswold, which 

 was imported into Spain from England in the eleventh century. 

 The offspring from this cross were named "Chunah." Columella, 

 a Roman engaged in rural pursuits near "Cadiz in the first century, 

 says that the Merino descended from fine-wool Tarentian ewes 

 rosscd with rams from Barbary. Strabo and Pliny the elder are 

 not of this opinion. 



Spanish Merinos were introduced into Sweden in 1723 and 

 into the Argentine Republic about 1797. , In 1788 King George 



