CLIMATIC INFLUENCES. 117 



except perhaps our fully Americanized Merino. The French 

 or Rambouillet, or delaine variety is, we think, hardly to be 

 included in this full preparation for entering the ram mar- 

 kets of the world. It will doubtless come in time, and all 

 the sooner as our breeders will fix on a settled type for this 

 class of sheep. The nature of the animal, as a scion of the 

 old best Spanish breed, improved by the culture of the 

 French breeders, has been improved by the first step in this 

 process, the second step is being taken here, and it must 

 go without saying as a distinct scientific certainty that 

 our breeders will soon have the market of the world for 

 these rams as well as for the true American Merinos, if they 

 will continue to breed for the type of sheep wanted to per- 

 fect the flocks of other countries, and to sustain them in this 

 perfection by the addition of blood acclimatized here. It is 

 thus seen that this matter of fixing a type in conformity to 

 the conditions cf an intermediate stage of the breeding, is 

 one of the most important to be considered by the American 

 breeder. 



The following illustrations of this subject may be offered 

 just here: 



The method of acclimatation suggested in the foregoing 

 lines should be regulated by several precautionary considera- 

 tions: 



First: It may have no certain great or definite effect in 

 adapting the constitution of individual animals to a new 

 climate, and the various differences growing out of it; but at 

 times may be wholly destructive to it, and wholly change for 

 the worse all the weakest points of the animal. 



Second: It has been shown by sufficient experience that 

 the offspring of animals vary in their constitutional adapta- 

 tion to the climate, and therefore this influence must be 

 controlled and enforced, and increased and kept up by the 

 effect of inheritance, through a wise course of breeding, and 

 a careful and skillful selection of the most successful in- 

 stances of this adaptation. 



Third: It has been shown that great and sudden changes 

 of climate have resulted in serious degeneration in regard 

 to health, and a considerable check to reproduction. Barren- 

 ness has resulted in many conspicuous instances, as a result 

 of wide climatic differences, by which the nervous system 



