56 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
their barns to build greater, or, at least, made the 
most costly preparations for growing wool, and then 
sent one hundred or one thousand miles to purchase 
Saxon sheep at $100 or $500 a head. When the 
prodigies arrived, with what a blank look the propri- 
etor, and with what an irrepressible titter the farm 
laborers, first surveyed the little strangers! If they 
had been exposed to storms and hardships on their 
journey, they did indeed present a very disconsolate 
appearance. 
But who ean see through the folly of his times ? 
The public were in the midst of a fine-wool cyclone. 
The manufacturer and producer talked of the ex- 
guisite fineness of this or that clip—but whether the 
sheep which bore it yielded much or little, had good 
or bad carcasses, were hardy or feeble, was scarcely a 
matter of thought., Enormously exaggerated expec- 
tations of the future demand for Saxon wool were en- 
tertained; it was to increase with our increasing popu- 
lation; the tariff was to raise prices to the highest 
pitch; and then the tariff and the high prices were 
to stand for generations, if not forever. Aladdin’s 
lamp was plainly discovered ! 
It is remarkable that this Saxon mania had so little 
effect, comparatively, on the estimated value of the 
descendants of the Spanish Merino in our country. 
They rose in value; but their chief value appeared 
to be considered as resting on the fact that they would 
grade up more rapidly than common sheep toward the 
Saxon standard of fineness—in other words, make 
a, better cross with the Saxon! The idea that they 
had a separate value, approaching that of the latter, 
appears to have entered nobody’s mind. Yet atthat 
