AMERICAN MERINO 27 



thought desirable it might gradually be left to support itself. 

 This has been the course of the British Government, whose 

 policy heretofore has been the strictest protection of native 

 industries, not only by tariffs but by the severest laws, even 

 so far as capital punishment, for transgressors of these 

 laws. For it is only recently that the English statutes, by 

 which hanging was made the penalty for stealing a sneep, 

 and equally severe penalties were inflicted upon those who 

 violated the statutes made forbidding importations or ex- 

 portation of the products of the flocks, were modified or re- 

 pealed. And to show the high consideration in which this 

 interest of the shepherd was held, the seat of the highest 

 judicial functionary in England was a woolsack, and even 

 at the present time the seat of the Lord Chancellor of Great 

 Britain is called the woolsack. This is only one of the 

 methods by which the British Empire has attained its vast 

 power, and its citizens their enormous wealth, by which 

 their government dominates the world, and the British 

 flag floats over every prominent location for a fortress; and 

 as the earth turns in its daily course the sun shines con- 

 tinuously on it somewhere. Truly, in the infancy of what 

 is in time to be if only true wisdom is its guide the greatest 

 civilized nation on the face of the earth, the American peo- 

 ple, should not cast aside the universal experience of the past 

 during which every great empire has laid the toundation 

 for its wealth and consequent power by a due policy of pro- 

 tection of its own interests. 



The result of the best breeding of this race of sheep haa 

 been marked by a continuous improvement. The weight of 

 the carcass has been increased twenty-five per cent. Its 

 form has been improved in that way by which the yield of 

 the fleece has been doubled; the legs have been shortened 

 and the back broadened at least one-third, the wool pro- 

 ducing surface thus being increased, while the density of 

 the wool on the skin is greater. As a wool-bearer this breed 

 has been greatly improved, while the mutton has been made 

 more marketable. And as a sire for market lambs the Ameri- 

 can Merino, crossed on the Southdown or Shropshire ewe, 

 " has been found to excel all others. 



