Merino.Ryelmd Breed of Sheep. 4 ^ 1 



makes hair incapable of being properly spun, and afterwards felted by milling ; 

 operations, which absolutely require that the filaments should readily submit to be 

 approximated and intertwisted, and, far from regaining their pristine straightness, 

 remain in that state into which they have been forced by art. It is, therefore, this 

 quality of inelasticity, to a certain degree, which gives Spanish wool its superior 

 capacity of grounding or milling. To the same cause we may attribute its greater 

 softness, smoothness, and silkiness to the touch, both before and after manufacture: 

 for these qualities are nothing more than the ready yielding of the body and all the 

 projecting points of the filaments to the very sensible nervous papillae at the ends 

 of the fingers, as they press or pass over them in every direction. These pro- 

 perties afford the great distinction between the Merino and best English wools. 

 It is by no means wholly connected with mere smallness of filament; for there are 

 parts of the Ryeland and Morfe fleeces, which are fully equal in that respect to 

 good N. E. or Negrette v>'ool; notwithstanding which, cloth made from them is 

 comparatively hollow, and to the touch dhar, rough, and wiry. 



On the other hand, the superior softness and silkiness of the wool of the fourth 

 cross of my Merino-Ryeland breed to that of the pure Negrette from which it was 

 derived, will not admit of any doubt. Sdll farther improvement in this quality 

 may be obtained from continually breeding in and in, as it is called, from sheep at 

 that degree of mixture. These facts I have fully detailed in the Tenth Volume of 

 the Papers of the Bath Agricultural Society, in which it is stated that I found the 

 wool of a whole generation made considerably coarser by a fifth cross of the pure 

 Merino, It might, indeed, be questioned whether this difference might not have 

 arisen from the inferior quality of the fleece of that individual ram which I then 

 employed. It is, however, there said, that the sheep, of which I spoke, sprung 

 from three different Merinos, and that there was the same general inferiority of 

 fineness in the wool-produce of all. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that 

 my great choice of rams of the Merino-Ryeland mixture gave me an advantage, 

 which was merely arithmetical, of selecting, from my own stock, rams with finer 

 fleeces than those of the pure Merino breed to which I had access; and that rams 

 so chosen would transmit this superiority to their descendants. We do, in fact, 

 find that some such care in selection has so improved the wool of the Merino race, 

 as to have made it, in other countries, superior to what it is in that from which the 

 breed has been derived. This is certainly the case with the wool of the flock of 



VOL. V. 3 L 



