^46 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE ONITilD STATES 



They increased in price, while fine wools ruled scarcely higher than in 

 war times. A class of manufactures had come to be fashionable that 

 required these combing wools, and the supply from Canada was, in a 

 measure, cut off by the operation of the new tariff, which enlarged the 

 home demand, kept prices up, and the wool chiefly at home. The small 

 amount of combing wool in the country was not equal to the demand, 

 and consequently there were large importations from Canada of Cots- 

 wold and Leicester sheep, principally the former, which were taken 

 into all the States from Maine on the east to Wisconsin on the west 

 and as far south as Tennessee. The introduction of the Ootswold was 

 encouraged by the woolen manufacturers and by many of the agricul- 

 tural papers. The breeding of Cotswold stock by Canadian breeders 

 for the farms of the United States became a profitable industry. As 

 the Cotswolds and other English breeds increased in Canada the Merino 

 decltaed. A Canadian correspondent of the Cultivator furnishes a 

 ghmpse of Canadian sheep husbandry in 1871 : 



At tlie present day (1871) it is rare to meet with a flock of Merinos in Ontario ; bnt 

 among the poorer classes of farmers a sort of conglomerated breed has sprung np, 

 the result of crossing the cheap-bought rejected culled rams of the Leicester breed- 

 ers upon the remains of the old Merino flocks, sold cheap or given away, by the better- 

 class farmers, to make room for the mutton breeds. These sheep, kept by the pres- 

 ent owners as near to the starving point in winter as will keep life in them, are as 

 yet far too common, and, being generally turned out in summer to wander about the 

 country roads in search of grass, are apt to give a stranger traveling over the country 

 a bad opinion of our sheep husbandly. The sheep have all the bad points of the 

 Merino, with but little compensating qualities derived from the Leicester, and being, 

 after the first croes, generally bred in-and-in, and the best sold to the butchers, make 

 about as worthless a class of sheep as one can see anywhere, giving inferior fleeces 

 of 2J to 5 pounds on carcasses of 60 to 100 pounds, the weight depending upon the 

 amount of Leicester blood. They are found all over the province, but are most 

 numerous in the Niagara peninsula and the older settlements bordering Lake Erie 

 and Ontario. In Lower Canada, near Quebec, the French haUtans, kept in igno- 

 rance and poverty under the peculiar feudal laws, resist all attempts at improve- 

 ment as innovations upon their customs, and keep to a small, but hardy, race of 

 sheep of the Merino class, probably originally derived from Brittany and Provence. 

 In that portion of Quebec bordering on Vermont and northern New York known as 

 the eastern townships, and settled by an English-speaking population, the mutton 

 breeds have been introduced and are fast superseding the Merinos. More recently 

 the fashion has set towards the Cotswolds, and though, as yet, there are but very few 

 flocks of that breed kept in their purity, their great size and heavy fleeces of flno- 

 combing wool is an inducement to many farmers who are not particular about purity 

 of blood to use Cotswold rams in their established flocks, in order to obtain an in- 

 crease in size in the carcass without injury to the quality of their wool. The most 

 recent importations of the Leicesters have been Border Leicesters, a large-framed, 

 broad-backed, stout-limbed race, carrying heavy fleeces ot combing wool on car- 

 casses of great weight which when they reach the butchers' hands appear likely to 

 prove more showy than eatable. W^ith the advent of the mutton breeds of sheep 

 not only has sheep-breeding in our mixed system of husbandry been profitable, and 

 our markets well supplied with first-class butchers' meat, at reasonable prices, but 

 the demand for our wools has increased to an extent never anticipated, and the price 

 goes relatively higher as the yield of fleece per head grows larger. 



