EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 51 



Eastern States, says: "They multiply fast; they are subject to but few 

 diseases in this country; their flesh is excellent food, and their wool of the 

 greatest importance to this nation, in which the woolen manufacturing 

 ought to be encouraged, and may be carried on to great advantage," and 

 he proceeds to quote from Mortimer : " The farmer should always buy 

 his sheep from a worse land than his own, and they should be big-boned 

 and have a long, greasy wool."* To improve the wool of the New Eng- 

 land flocks Dr. Deane advised that no lambs be kept for breeders but 

 such as bear the best wool; and fine-wooled rams should be procured 

 from distant places or from foreign countries. 

 Youatt, in his exhaustive treatise on sheep, says that — 



until tLe introduction of tlie Merinos into North America little that was satisfactory 

 could be affirmed of the sheep of any part of that country. Many portions of the 

 United States, and even of Canada, possessed advantages for the breeding of sheep 

 that were not surpassed iu Europe. The country was undulating or hilly — the in- 

 closures more extensive than in the best breeding districts of England — almost every 

 pasture famished with running water, and sheltered more or less by trees against 

 the summer's sun; yet the sheep were of the commonest kind. There was a preju- 

 dice against their moat; a prejudice against them altogether; and there was scarcely 

 a district in which the wool was fit for any but the coarser kind of fabrics. It might 

 have been thought to be the policy of the mother country to foster a prejudice of 

 this kind, in order that her colonies might be as dependent as possible upon her ; 

 and particularly that her woolen manufactures might then find a ready sale. Ac- 

 cordingly the American sheep, although somewhat different in various districts, con- 

 sisted chiefly of a coarse kind of Leicester, and those were originally of British 

 breed. 



These sheep were slow in arriving at maturity, compared with the im- 

 proved English breeds, and yielded, when fally grown, from 10 to 14 

 pounds of a middling quality of mutton to the quarter, and a wool only 

 suited to the coarsest fabrics, averaging, in the hands of good farmers, 

 from 3 to 3 J pounds to the fleece. They were usually long-legged, 

 light in the fore-quarter, and narrow in the breast and back, although 

 some rare instances might be found of flocks with the short legs and 

 some approximation to the general form of the improved breeds. The 

 common sheep were excellent breeders, often rearing, almost entirely 

 destitute of care and without shelter, 100 per cent of lambs, and in 

 small flocks a still larger proportion. These, too, were usually dropped 

 in March or the earlier part of April. Eestless in their disposition, 

 their impatience of restraint almost equaled that of the untamed Ar- 

 gali, from which they were descended; and in many sections of our 

 country it was common to see ft'om twenty to fifty of them roving, with 

 little regard to inclosures, over the possessions of their owner and his 

 neighbors, leaving a large portion of their wool adhering to bushes 

 and thorns, and the remainder placed nearly beyond the possibility 

 of carding by the tory-weed and burdock, so common on new lands. 

 The old common stock of sheep, as a distinct family, have about disap- 



* "New England Farmer, or Georgical Dictionary." Samuel Deane, vice-president 

 of Bowdoin College, Worcester, Mass., 1797. 



