XXX . APPENDIX. 



that the Spanish Merino as developed in New England, is a hardy and 

 profitable animal, have learned how to turn their pastures and their 

 coarse fodder to the best account. They have obtained an animal 

 which can bear our winters well, roams over our hills with natural apti- 

 tude, furnishes an ample return in wool during his life, and supplies the 

 table with the choicest and cheai^est-made mutton, when he is brought 

 to the stall and the shambles. There are sheep whose sluggish and 

 delicate organization requires constant pampering, and that luxuriance 

 of feed which may be obtained on highly-cultivated fields, or in a stall 

 well supplied with gi'ain ; and which are unfit for the toil of feeding on 

 our steep and rugged hill-sides. There are undoubtedly localities in 

 which they may be profitably fed. But let those who suppose that the 

 Merino is a delicate animal which must be sheltered from every shower, 

 remember the long journeys whi'ch he performs in his native mountains, 

 and the exposure which he endures with impunity in every part of 

 Europe, and in every section of the United States. Choice bucks and 

 ewes, kept for the value of their blood, are carefully housed in order to 

 exhibit their full capacity for growing strong and heavy fleeces — wool 

 especially adapted to the most profitable branches of American manu- 

 factures — and not because the delicacy of their constitution requires it. 

 So the breeder of Shorthorns, or Ayrshii'es, or Devons, or Herefords, 

 endeavors, by shelter and careful feeding, to show the capacity of his 

 animals, and to improve and develop those qualities which he desires 

 to transmit with their blood ; knowing as he does that the acquired 

 faculties become at last a part of the nature which the breeding animal 

 can hand down to his descendants. 



We have seen the heavier breeds of sheep fond of the idleness and 

 confinement of the fixrm-yard and slow to leave it. But not so of the 

 Merino and some of the excellent mountain breeds of Wales and Scot- 

 land, to which we can appropriately apply the words of Bloomfield in 

 his refreshing rustic poem, " The Farmer's Boy," where he says : — 



" For the luxuriant their grassy food, 

 Sheep, long-contined, but loathe the present good, 

 Bleating around the homeward gate they meet, 

 And starve and pine with plenty at their feet. 

 Loosed from the winding lane, a joyful throng, 

 See o'er yon pasture, how they pour along." 



It is this ability to roam which peculiarly adapts the Merino to our 

 hilly lands, and which added to his heavy yield of wool and his easily 

 fed carcase, makes him a profitable animal — the chosen sheep of Ver- 

 mont, and Ohio, and New Hampshire, and Maine, and Illinois, and 

 Texas, — the favorite of the best fai'mers in Virginia before that State 



