FINE WOOL SHEEP IIUSBANDRY. 95 
and if the weather be warm, the American fleece 
again becomes lubricated and “ weighted” with yolk, 
while the French fleece remains almost as dry as 
cotton. 
In one respect, certainly the American fleece de- 
rives a purely legitimate advantage from these facts. 
With the rapid return of the yolk comes the rapid 
return of lustre and the characteristic silkiness of 
handling so much prized by buyers. 
I am inclined to believe that wholly independently 
of all extraneous matter, the actual fibre of the Amer- 
ican wool, if we could weigh exactly equal quanti- 
ties of each, would be found heaviest. The bones, 
muscles, skin, and other animal tissues of a small 
animal, even of the same species, are less porous and, 
to use the familiar term, tiner-grained than those of 
animals fifty per cent. larger. Wool and hair closely 
assimilate in their organic constituents with these sub- 
stances.* I know no reason, therefore, why an anal- 
ogous decrease of density should not extend to the 
wool an hair of the larger animal. 
But without taking such refinements into the ac- 
count, and to sum up the matter, the American far 
excels the French Merino in the combined production 
of wool and yolk ; and as yolk is allowed to be a 
marketable commodity, the mass of our farmers pre- 
* Analyses made by Liebig, Johnston, Scherer, Playfair, Boeckman, 
and Mulder, prove that the organic part of wool, hair, skin, nails, horns, 
feathers, lean meat, blood, etc., are very nearly the same. The or- 
ganic part of wool, according to Johnston, consists of carbon 50.65; 
hydrogen, 7.03; nitrogen, 17.71; oxygen and sulphur, 24.61. The 
inorganic constituents are small. When burned it leaves but 2.0 per 
cent. of ash. (See Liebig’s Ayricultural Chemistry, Appendia ; and 
Johnston's Agricultural Chemistry, Lecture X VILL) 
