FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 15 
lation to a dozen or two of them. Our early writers 
on such topics appear to have eschewed nothing so 
much as exact and definite facts. 
Youatt ascertained, by actual admeasurement, that 
the fibres of a specimen of picklock (the best) wool 
from a Negretti fleece, had the diameter of 745 part 
of an inch. Another “fair sample” which he thought 
was probably jina, or No. 2, and a third one taken 
from Lord Western’s.Merinos, in England, gave the 
same admeasurement. This may probably be assumed 
as the average fineness of the good Merino wool of 
that day. 
Having attempted to show the principal character- 
istics of this celebrated breed of sheep at the period of 
its highest development in its native country, com- 
ments and comparisons will be reserved until its 
French and German offshoots—also introduced ito 
the United States—are first examined. 
The French Merino. 
Colbert, the eminent French statesman, was the first, 
so far as I have ascertained, who attempted the trans- 
plantation of the Spanish Merino into other lands. 
Nor have I learned the date of that attempt. Colbert 
was born in 1619, and died in 1683. Occupied in in- 
cessant and harassing cares, he could give no personal 
attention to his experiment, and it is to be presumed 
the sheep encountered among his dependents that ob- 
stinate antipathy which subsequently met them among 
the ignorant in every other country outside of Spain. 
As would be expected under such circumstances, they 
attracted no notice, and soon disappeared. A subse- 
