FINE WOOU SIEEP HUSBANDRY. 11 
is equal to 1.087 lbs. avoirdupois; the Austrian foot 
to 1.284 English feet. 
Mr. Livingston, in describing the Spanish Merino 
of his day, as compact and short-legged, took for his 
standard of comparison, doubtless, the gaunt, tall 
sheep of America; and Colonel Humphreys’s descrip- 
tion, sent to the Massachusetts Society for promoting 
Agriculture, requires the same explanation. Most 
British writers, with their eyes on their own mutton- 
breeds, fall into the opposite extreme. Petri’s meas- 
urements show that the Spanish sheep were far less 
compact than their American descendants, though 
they ran to no extraordinary excess in the opposite 
direction. 
We should gather the impression from Livingston’s 
remarks—and Humphreys expressly says—that they 
were broad-chested.* Compared with other sheep, 
or their own descendants of the present day, this was 
quite otherwise. The concurrent testimony of both 
writers and observers, who had more practical 
acquaintance with the points of an animal’s carcass 
than either of the above distinguished gentlemen, as 
well as my own observations thirty years ago, when 
should be no greater difference in the “circumference of the belly” 
between the Spanish and American sheep in the table; and one 
would infer that a good portion of the weight of the former must be 
made up of a belly so disproportioned in size. But I have no doubt 
that Petri measured their circumference in full fleece, and without any 
compression of the wool. I shall reserve any further comparisons 
until I describe the improved American Merino. 
* “The neck short, the chest broad. The members more compact 
and thick than those of our former breed of sheep; and the carcass is 
thought to have smaller bones, and to be more rounded in the hinder 
part.”— Colonel Humphreys’s Letter to Massachusetis Society for Pro- 
molting Agriculture. 
