98 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
former was an animal of decidedly exceptional quali- 
ties, I feel authorized to say that Grandee would have 
passed for a coarsish-fleeced animal in any really jine 
full-blood American Merino flock of that day. And 
I believe that no one pretends that the modern im- 
portations of French sheep exhibit any improvement 
on Mr. Collins’s in respect to quality of wool. 
But the really good sheep of the later French im- 
portations were selected in France for a specific object 
—for the purpose of attaining the greatest amount of 
wool of a fair medium grade of fineness. To make the 
comparison even, we must select American Merinos 
which have been bred and pampered for the same ob- 
ject—the production of the heaviest fleece. And it is 
my opinion that in these classes the French wool is at 
least as good as the American. 
The only really weak point of the best French Me- 
rino as a pure wool producing animal, is the want of 
that hardiness which adapts it to our changeable cli- 
mate and to our systems of husbandry. In this par- 
ticular it is to the American Merino what the great 
pampered Short-Horn of England is to the little, 
hardy, black cattle of the Scotch Highlands—what 
the high-ted carriage horse, sixteen hands high, 
groomed and attended in a wainscoted stable, is to the 
Sheltie that feeds among the moors and mosses, and 
defies the tempests of the Orkneys. The French sheep 
has not only been highly kept and housed from storm 
and rain and dew for generations, but it has been bred 
away from the normal type of its race. The Dishley 
“Grandee’s” wool was more than double that of “ Premium’s, ? while a 
single fibre of the former supported 84.6 grains, and “Premium’s” 
wool broke with 57.1 grains. 
