102 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
sheep, I can also say I have seen crosses from these 
long-legged, slab-sided, narrow-chested French rams as 
miserable and worthless as can be imagined.” 
My own experiments in this cross, candor requires 
me to say, have been less successful. Some of them 
were made with a ram bred by Col. Rotch and pure 
blood American Merino ewes; some were purchased 
of gentlemen who started with such ewes and bred 
them to first-rate French rams obtained of Messrs. 
Taintor and Patterson; and some were got by pure 
American rams on high grade French and American 
ewes (averaging say fifteen-sixteenths or more French, 
and the remainder American Merino blood). From 
this last cross | expected much. The ewes were com- 
pact and noble-looking animals. The produce was 
obviously better than the get of French rams on the 
same ewes; but after watching it for two years, I have 
recently come rather reluctantly to the conclusion that, 
in this climate, even these grades are not intrinsically 
as valuable as pure American Merinos. 
But the Merino ram which got them, though appar- 
ently presenting the most admirable combination of 
points for such a cross,* has not proved himself a su- 
perior sire with other ewes; and I do not, therefore, 
regard this experiment as conclusive. 
Some well-managed experiments of both these kinds 
have been tiied by the Messrs. Baker, of Lafayette, 
and the Messrs. Clapp, of Pompey, New York. They 
* He weighed about 140 Ibs , was compact and symmetrical, and 
his fleece weighed 14 lbs. washed. He was a very dark, yolkv shvuep. 
He was bred m Vermont; and though undoubtedly full blood, prob- 
ably did not spriig from ancestors as good as himself, or in other 
words, he was an “ accidental” animal. 
