10 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
blood Merinos yielded about 4 Ibs. of wool per head. 
And persons who obtained small choice lots of him, 
from the period of 1835, could obtain ewes yielding 
nearly or quite 43 lbs. per head. In 1835, Francis 
Rotch, the celebrated cattle and sheep breeder of 
Morris (then Louisville), New York, published the 
statement that his flock of Spanish Merinos yielded 
an average of 44 Ibs. of “ well washed wool.” My own 
flock, larger than Mr. Rotch’s, yielded an equal amount. 
This was also undoubtedly true of the flock of Stephen 
Atwood, of Woodbury, Connecticut; of John T. Rich, 
of Shoreham, Vermont; and of many other flocks de- 
scended from those of the two last named gentlemen. 
And the Spanish sheep, then the subject of great 
attention—and of attention directed especially towards 
increase of fleece—was rapidly adding to the disparity 
between itself and the Saxon in this particular. In 
1844, I purchased a small lot of Rich ewes in Ver- 
mont which yielded an average of 5 lbs. of washed 
wool ata year old. The same year, a little flock of 
thirty (descended from Colonel Humphreys’ sheep), 
yielded me an average of 5 Ibs. 133 oz. of washed 
wool.* ° 
* Two of the number were rams, and four of the ewes had two 
years’ fleeces on; but, on the other hand, a portion of them were 
yearlings and two year olds, which yeaned at the customary time, and 
treated in the customary way in my flock, always fall considerably 
short of the fleeces of grown sheep My impression at the time was, 
that the fleeces of the twenty-eight ewes, including the double ones, 
did not weigh more than would the fleeces of the same sheep at three 
or four years old, without any double ones The sheep were not 
housed except in winter, and were wholly unpampered. See my de- 
tailed statement of their keep, &c., in Transactions N. Y. State Agri- 
cultural Society, 1844. They drew the first premium of the Society 
for best managed flock. 
