114 THE DOMESTIC SHEEP. 



Indian climate have been such that after a century of occu- 

 pation, the British residents in India have been obliged to 

 return to their native country to somewhat lengthen out 

 their shortened lives, due to the baneful effects of an ener- 

 vating and unwholesome climate. It is the fact that the 

 effects of extreme heat changes the wool of a sheep to hair, 

 after a few generations, and similar effects occur to change 

 the character of the fleeces of the English sheep in the first 

 crosses made under excessive change of climate. Of course, 

 the opposite effects occur when the new conditions are all 

 in favor of the sheep, but this can only be secured by ex- 

 perience; no sufficient certainty can be assured in any other 

 way than this. 



But long experience has shown, that, with but little ex- 

 ception, full acclimatation is possible with all kinds of ani- 

 mals except in a few instances, as that, the Newfoundland 

 dog will not live in India; nor do the Spanish breed of 

 fowls thrive in any other country than in their own. This 

 is true with other breeds of fowls, which change their char- 

 acter, sometimes ruinously, when transferred to a different 

 climate. This is most marked in the case of wild animals, 

 which are rarely successfully reared in any other locality 

 than that native to them. Thus the natural adaptation of 

 animals to strange and different climates, directly, has very 

 rarely been successful, and a course of breeding by occa- 

 sional reversion to the old stock, from its original home, 

 has been found necessary, as well as some considerable time 

 that must elapse before acclimatation can be successfully 

 and permanently assured. 



As in all similar changes, acclimatation has been found 

 more easily successful by taking intermediate stages in the 

 process. This fact is of great importance to the American 

 breeders, not only in sheep, but of cattle and horses. Prog- 

 ress by stages has always been found the most sure and 

 effective, and the results gained at each step have been 

 fixed without any apparent reversion or degradation. Thus 

 the Spanish Merino sheep has not been found satisfactory 

 in Argentina, or in Australia, or in South Africa. But the 

 same sheep, after years of training and preparation in the 

 United States, has been most decidedly so. And this is why 

 the shrewd breeders of Australia, made expert by a century 



