SECRETARY'S REPORT. 101 



was much improved, and the quantity considerably augmented ; 

 the carcase was brouglit nearer the ground, and rendered more 

 compact, and they lost some of their unquiet and roving dispo- 

 sition. 



The cross with the Saxonies for reasons to wliich we shall 

 hereafter allude, has not generally been so successful. With the 

 Leiccsters and Downs, so far as size, form and a propensity to 

 take on fat are concerned, it is manifest that they are much 

 improved. They are so hardy, thrifty, and such good nurses, 

 that they make an excellent cross for lambs with a South Down 

 or an Oxford Down ram. Lambs of one of the Committee by 

 an Oxford Down ram out of dark faced native (or as they are 

 called, " Irish " or " English smuts,") at sixteen weeks old, 

 dressed from forty to forty-eight pounds, from milk and grass 

 alone. Till after the Revolution, such sheep furnished all the 

 wool used in the country for domestic purposes, and the fine 

 cloth was all imported from England ; the meat was not in 

 general favor, and but little eaten. Had they been bred with 

 any thing like the skill and patience manifested by Bakewell, 

 and Pullman, to improve the good points, and to correct the bad 

 ones, they would have become a breed answering all our require- 

 ments for mutton and lamb, and we should never have been 

 obliged to go to England for our sheep. 



From a very early period in English history, as early certain- 

 ly as the twelfth century, sheep, wool and all the manufactures 

 of that article, were by legislation and royal edicts carefully 

 fostered and sedulously encouraged, and as a part of the same 

 policy, they were ever in an equal degree discouraged and 

 frowned upon in the colonies of that powerful and far-seeing 

 nation. 



MERINOS. 



At the close of the war with Great Britain, then, we found 

 ourselves not only without manufactories of woollens, but also 

 destitute of the material upon which to work ; the attention of 

 our statesmen was early directed to supply this deficiency, and 

 they wisely looked to the Merinos of Spain to do it, but it was 

 with great difficulty that tlie Spanish government could be per- 

 suaded to allow any exportation of them. In 1793, the late 

 lion. William Foster, of Boston, then a young man travelling 



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