18 FINE WOOL SHEEP UUSBANDRY. 
statement,* for Livingston, so familiar with the Ram- 
bouillet flock, accepts it as such, and subjoins the fol- 
lowing remarks: “It is proper to observe that the 
French pound is almost one-twelfth heavier than the 
English; but, at the same time, to note that from the 
general custom of folding the sheep in France, of feed- 
ing them in fallows, and wintering them in houses, 
they are very dirty,t and their fleeces, of course, pro- 
portionably heavier; the loss in washing is about sixty 
per cent., so that the average weight of the ram’s 
fleece would be, when washed and scoured, about six 
American pounds, exclusive of tags and belly wool.” 
“ Scouring,” even as Mr. Livingston uses the word,t 
isa very different process from brook-washing; and 
the belly wool, and clean tags, which are done up 
with the fleece in this country, would, I think, equal 
the weight acquired from additional yolkiness and 
dirtiness; so I infer that to place these unwashed 
French fleeces on an equality, in respect to cleanli- 
* The supposed statement of Lasteyrie, under examination, may be 
a misprint. Having suffered my wool library to become scattered, I 
cannot verify the accuracy of the quotation from the original. I copy 
it from my ‘Sheep Husbandry in the South,” and on turning to 
Youatt, I find he gives the same figures. 
I will, in this connection, add that, for the reason already given, I 
shall generally, in this paper, be under the necessity of re-quoting for- 
eign authors from the work of mine alluded to. It is possible that 
occasional misprints have crept into succeeding editions of that work. 
+ A sheep, housed nights, and from storms, retains an addition ul 
amount of the soluble yolk in its fleece, which would far outweigh the 
mere ‘dirt’? which adheres to the fléece. 
t I do not apprehend that Mr. Livingston here rofers to a process 
as thorough as that now employed by manufacturers in cleansing 
wool; but, judging from his remarks on other occasions, I infer that 
he meant something about equivalent to the Spanish mode of washing, 
described in a previous note. 
