148 MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



quire several pages. But to recall the names of Colonel Stowell, 

 Rockwell, Rich, Brookins, Stickney, Burwell, Bissell, Buttolph, 

 Lane, serves to bring to the mind a host of other Vermont breeders 

 of their time, who bred great Merinos, and did their share in im- 

 proving the breed. 



With the Merino, as with all else, the star of empire wends its 

 way westward, and with this movement we find a gradual change 

 of type from the excessively wrinkly Vermont Merino. The lead- 

 ing breeders of New York, prominent among whom we may name 

 Ray, the Martins, Markham, Cossitt, Earll, Bell, and others worthy 

 of mention as true breeders and improvers, clung to the wrinkles. 

 But the central states breeders, especially in Michigan and Ohio, 

 while breeding heavy fleeces yet felt the force of the western de- 

 mand for larger, plainer rams, and were almost imperceptibly 

 influenced toward a type of Merino approximating what is known 

 at the present time as the Merino B type. Prominent among these 

 central states breeders were the several members of the Wood 

 family, the Van Gieson brothers, the Deweys, Kennedy, Fellows, 

 Boyden, Ball, and many others in Michigan, while the Hiatts, and 

 later the Elders, Bell, Cook and many others of Ohio, the Pecks of 

 Illinois, and many more have had no small part in improving the 

 Merino. 



A larger, better shaped body, carrying all the good, fine wool 

 possible, but with a little more staple, possibly a little finer fiber, 

 a free oil, not gum, not so many wrinkles on the body, these are a 

 few of the characteristics sought by present day Merino breeders 

 who are breeding the type of Merino in which wool is the principal 

 consideration. To be sure, during the time when the Vermont 

 type was enjoying its greatest prosperity these central states pro- 

 duced as good sheep as were produced in Vermont, even to furnish- 

 ing stock rams to the latter, but with the evolution of American 

 sheep industry, these breeders changed their idea of type of Merino 

 to conform to the new conditions, while the more eastern breeders 

 still clung to what had made them fame and profit. 



The present day American Merino is distinctively an American 

 production, no recourse to imported animals having been made 

 for new blood since the Spanish importations of nearly a century 

 ago. And that he is the greatest wool producer known is evidenced 

 by the fact that the leading sheep breeding countries in all parts of 

 the world have sought to improve their flocks and increase the 

 weight of their fleeces by the use of the best American Merinos. 

 And his breeders are constantly aiming to improve him, by cor- 

 recting possible faults of form and securing as much good fine wool 

 with as much staple as possible. For even as he who makes two 

 blades of grass grow where only one grew before is a public bene- 

 factor how much more is that breeder who makes two fibers of 

 wool grow where only one was before ? 



