PREFACE. 



That a work embracing perhaps all the topics of the 

 present treatise, has long been demanded by American 

 Wool-growers, cannot be denied. The English, and 

 other foreign works on the important subject of Sheep 

 Husbandry, notwithstanding the ability with which they 

 are written, are unadapted to our wants, chiefly because 

 the breeds of sheep and modes of management are, in the 

 main, so essentially different in our own country and 

 Great Britain. Something American, therefore, is need- 

 ed — a work which w^ould tend to correct the many errors 

 and abuses of management, and enter into such minute 

 details connected therewith, as would teach the merest 

 novice his duties. 



With many others, I have long been waiting with the 

 hope that some one having the necessary 2^^^ctical 

 knoidedge, and in other respects eminently quahfied, 

 would undertake the difficult task of supplying us with 

 such a treatise ; but no one having come forward, after 

 due consultation with some friends, on whose judgment I 

 could safely rely, I determined to attempt what, under 

 other circumstances, I could not have summoned the res- 

 olution, and I may add, temerity, to do. It is, therefore, 

 with no ordinary degree of apprehension that I appear be- 

 fore the public in the character of an author, and the 

 more especially of a work of this kind, having been obli- 

 ged, in a measure, to carve out my own Avay, and act the 

 " lone pioneer." 



It was my original intention to have limited the histor- 

 ical part to the prominent and most profitable breeds, but 

 so little is generally known of those pecuhar to Asia and 

 Africa, as well as remote portions of Europe, it appeared 



