No. 4.] SHEEP RAISING. 157 



iu-breeding of defective sheep. In every-day business it is 

 to be avoided, because it is a metliod which is only to be 

 employed with great care and discrimination. 



Mr. A. M. Lyman (of Montague). Does not a cross 

 between the Merino and Southdown make the best class of 

 sheep that can be grown ? 



Mr. Bennett. I think it makes an elegant sheep. I am 

 not prepared to say that it makes any better sheep than a 

 cross with some other breeds. The Southdown is the 

 favorite sheep with many people. The cross with the 

 Merino makes an elegant sheep. The Merino blood gives 

 the sheep the capacity for enduring housing through our 

 New England winters. 



Mr. Lyman. I have been engaged in buying sheep for 

 the last fifty years, and I have never found any really better 

 sheep for the market than a cross between the Southdown 

 and the Merino. 



Mr. BuRSLEY. You would recommend any of the Downs 

 crossed with the Merino, as a rule for Massachusetts? 



]Mr. Bennett. I think they make a fine sheep for Massa- 

 chusetts. If perpetuated, you get onto the old question of 

 grade animals. For the first cross it is all right, but after 

 that it is the old question of the extent to which cross-breed- 

 ing is satisfactory. People claim that it can be carried so 

 far as to make the animals useless. 



Mr. Lyman. Is it not more difiicult to dispose of old 

 sheep in the markets now than it was forty years ago ? 



Mr. Bennett. I imagine it is. I think the taste and the 

 fashion in laml) and nuittoii have changed somewhat. I think 

 there is a fad in wanting such fat mutton chops. They are 

 the fashion at the present time. Old sheep used to be in 

 good demand by the canning factories ; it made no difterence 

 how thin they were. There is not as good a demand as 

 there used to be for old sheep. 



Mr. Lyman. I used to buy nothing but old sheep, and 

 feed them and butcher them for the market ; I sold no lambs ; 

 but now the market demands all lambs, or mostly lambs, and 

 few old sheep. 



Mr. Bennett. That is the New England market. The 

 New England Dressed Meat and Wool Company at Somer- 



