86 VEGETATION ADAPTED TO DIFFERENT BREEDS. 



a matchless meat-producing animal, is in some part a product 

 of the temperate, uniform and moist climate of England. It 

 has withstood the effects of acclimation in the United States 

 successfully, but it requires more care and shelter and is not 

 so well adapted to our habitual extremes of heat and cold as 

 the hardier Merino.* Exposed without good, adequate 

 shelter to rapid and excessive variations of temperature, it is 

 subject to colds which tend to various diseases, both of 

 inflammatory and tjrphoid types: and, at best, it wilts and 

 withers away. It is not adapted to very cold or very warm 

 climates for another reason — on account of the influence they 

 exert on vegetation. But its sustentation will be considered 

 under another head. 



The Merino endures vicissitudes and extremes of weather 

 better than any other sheep which approximates to it in value. 

 Its range of habitation extends throughout the temperate 

 zone, ft will flourish wherever the ox or the horse will 

 flourish; but, like those animals, thrives better for some 

 degree of winter shelter anywhere, and demands it in regions 

 of severe cold, and especially in those where humidity and 

 cold are liable to foUow each other rapidly. 



Vegetation. — The English breeds of sheep require 

 abundant and steady supplies of food properly or profitably 

 to develop their peculiar value as mutton sheep — viz., their 

 fattening properties and early maturity. They are therefore 

 unadapted to regions where the summer is hot enough to dry 

 up the vegetation, 'as on the plains of Texas and Southern 

 Spain — or regions subject to periodical drouths, like Australia 

 and the Cape of Good Hope — or those where vegetation is 

 locked up by long and rigorous winters, as in various 

 northern inhabited regions of both hemispheres. For the 

 scarcity of succulent food produced by summer drouth, there 

 can be no adequate reparation to these hearty and gross 

 feeding animals. For the long and severe winter, there 

 may be sufficient extra provision made in grain and roots: 

 and where land is comparatively cheap, and mutton in good 

 demand, that extra provision can be profitably made. These 

 are the conditions of New York and New England as mutton 

 producing countries. England presents far more favorable 

 natural, and, in many respects, artificial conditions, for its 



* I do not of course here include among the improved English mutton sheep, the 

 Wack-faced Scotch or Heath Sheep, or the Cheviots, though I enumerated them among 

 the English sheep which are residents of the United States. 



