EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 171 



land had virtually destroyed her infant commerce and thrown her iipou 

 her own resources. Manufactures had been growing, but it liad been a 

 difficult matter to sell an American article could a British one be had 

 at any price, however extravagant. Anglomania was as prevalent 

 in those days as it is now. But the time did come when jmblic opinion 

 forced everyone to wear goods of American manufacture, consequently 

 manufactures had a great spring and fine wool was in great demand. 

 Attention Avas now turned to the iiocks of Livingston and Humphreys, 

 and rams and ewes of the pure breed, and even half-bloods, sold at 

 high prices. Livingston sokl lambs at $1,000 apiece. Humphreys 

 realized as much. A fresh importation of 1 ran^ from Spain sold for 

 $1,000, and about the same time Humphreys made a sale of 2 rams and 

 2 ewes for the unprecedented ijrice of $1,500 each. The fever ran from 

 town to town and from farm to farm. Advertisements were accom- 

 panied with marvelous statements of the value of the Merino and its 

 Avool and the great profits in raising them. The barren hillsides gave 

 Ijromise of rich returns for their scanty pasturage, aurt the worn-out 

 lands were to be enriched by tlie pasturing of sheep upon them, whose 

 fleeces were, in return, to enrich their owner. Farms that the owners 

 desired to dispose of were advertised as peculiarly adapted to the rais- 

 ing of Merino sheep. The most scrubby, common sheep that tbe coun- 

 try could produce were named after the most noted Spanish patriots. 

 Sloops that sailed from New York coastwise were named " Merino." 

 An honest old farmer of HopcAvell, N. J., who raised half a bushel of 

 potatoes from one, called them Merino potatoes. A bull calf in Penn- 

 sylvania was guaranteed as of the genuine Merino breed; and a Dutch 

 farmer's wife of the State named her tenth child Merino Schmidt. 



The mania did not escape the notice of the wags, and an advertise- 

 ment appeared in a Baltimore paper offering for sale a large number 

 of the celebrated Tuscan improved breed, lineally descended from tlio 

 best breeds of the Golden Age, with fleeces as much superior to the finest 

 Merino as the Merino fleece is to the common marengo. 



But wbat iJiaJces the Tuscan fleece so invaluable and gives to tlie breed snch incal- 

 culable value is that the fleeces are naturally endned with all the varions colors, of 

 a more perfect and brilliant character and luster than can be imparted to them by 

 the most celebrated dyes, of the most beantiful glossy black; others of brilliant ver- 

 milion and scarlet; some of the splendid Tyrean purple, and some of the gaudy saf- 

 fron; also the seven original colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and 

 violet. And by arranging the threads of these several-colored fleeces in the loom in 

 their proper order and agreeably to their original refrangibility, the beautiful and 

 fashionable rainbow cloth is made, and it is only from the fleeces of the Tuscan sheep 

 that the rainbow cloth can be made. Besides the immense emolument from tliese 

 sheep, they are the most delightful resource of intellectual enjoyment to philosophic 

 experimentalizing minds, as gentlemen may amuse themselves in the production of 

 an endless variety of colored fleeces by skillfully blending the agents who are to 

 to weave the wool in nature's loom. 



And not to be behind Livingston, Humphreys, and others as patriots 

 and public benefactors, these sheep were placed at the low price of 

 $5,000 for rams and $500 to $1,500 for ewes. 



