No. 244.] 175 



as a common food, chemistry is so far advanced that we may then 

 find a substitute. 



The following experiments, if correctly made and accurately 

 noted down, will no doubt throw a light on this important subject, 

 perhaps bring to light the proper food to produce an increase of 

 wool: 



Let twelve gentlemen, rich enough to think nothing of any ex- 

 pense or trouble in carrying it out, (I wish I had the means, I should 

 consider it the greatest pleasure to try for the discovery,) let each 

 gentleman take twelve sheep, that is twelve lots of twelve sheep 

 each, and feed them scientifically with the sole view of finding out 

 what food and treatment will increase the quantity of wool. The 

 only preliminary precautions to be taken are, that no sheep must be 

 selected whose individual amount of wool clipped last year from each 

 sheep is not accurately known. There is no difficulty in this; there 

 are sufficient enlightened flockmasters who keep an accurate account 

 of their clips, and who no doubt would lend their sheep for experi- 

 ment. The next point is, after these gentlemen are ready, and have 

 made up their minds as to their general food, they must state it to 

 the Institute, (twelve months is the time the experiment ought to 

 last,) that if two or more men should hit upon the same treatment, 

 they may be requested by the Institute to vary it so that each lot may 

 be fed with different food. It is quite superfluous to give any direc- 

 tions to such scientific gentlemen as may undertake this, to make the 

 discovery will be a great honor. It is to be hoped that Mr. Pell 

 will take one lot. With the necessary quantity of food that a sheep 

 requires to keep up the animal heat comfortably without effort, then 

 he is at his ease, and thrives and heats the oxygen he consumes, it is 

 the excess of food beyond this point that creates wool, fat, muscle, 

 &c. This ought never to be forgotten. If one lot could be conve- 

 niently kept in a dry deep cellar in winter, m demi-obscurity, with 

 equal temperature, it ought to be tried. Mules are sleek and fat in 

 the coal mines of Pennsylvania, seven hundred feet below the surface. 

 I wish to impress strongly on the minds of gentlemen trying these 

 experiments not to be deterred from giving any kind of food because 

 it is not the custom to give such things to sheep; food the most 

 bizzare and extraordinary should be tried. In these experiments the 

 point is to go out of the beaten track of prejudice, and try everything 



