56 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ony. They were kept upon the islands in Boston harbor as 

 early as 1633, and two years after there were ninety-two in 

 the vicinity of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It ])ecame the 

 universal practice in the days of homsspun for a farmer to 

 keep a number sufficient to clothe his family. 



The old " native" sheep was a coarse, long-legged, and un- 

 profitable animal, and there was no improvement made in the 

 breeding till towards the close of the last century, when, in 

 1793, the first merinos, or fine-woolled sheep, were imported 

 by William Foster of Boston. They were wholly unappre- 

 ciated, were given to a gentleman to keep, and he, knowing 

 nothing of their value, "simply ate them," and a few years 

 after was buying the same class of sheep at $1,000 per head. 

 The embargo of 1808 induced many to turn their attention to 

 fine- wool sheep, and soon after very large numbers of merino 

 sJieep were imported and distributed throughout the United 

 States, and our modern sheep-husbandry, now grown up to 

 its proportional importance, may be said to date from these 

 importations. 



The condition of the country gradually changed, and since 

 the opening of lines of communication to the West, the East- 

 ern States have found it hard to compete in the raising of 

 fine wool with farmers who could furnish us with the raw ma- 

 terial for our manufactories at a cost of a cent a pound or 

 less for transportation. The growing of sheep for mutton 

 and for wool has, therefore, been left to^ a great extent to the 

 Western States and to Texas. We find, accordingly, that of 

 the 28,477,951 reported by the last census, Ohio had a])out 

 5,000,000, California 2,768,187, Michigan nearly 2,000,000, 

 and Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin over a million 

 each. The quantity of avooI raised exceeded a hundred mil- 

 lion of pounds, more than a fifth part of which was raised in 

 Ohio. This was a gain of over forty-seven and a half mil- 

 lion pounds over the product of 1850, and of very nearly 

 forty million over that of 1860. 



It will thus be seen that the production of wool constitutes 

 no inconsiderable part of our agricultural industry, and that, 

 in this respect, we have made a highly commendable degree 

 of progress. This production, though little enough Avhen 

 compared with what it ought to be in a country so extensive 



