138 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
within the wool;* and when it is sufficiently abundant 
in the fluid form to ooze constantly to the outer ex- 
tremity, it catches and retains dust, the pollen of hay, 
&ec., and gradually inspissates into that black guminy 
mass now so eagerly sought for by a class of Merino 
breeders. 
Vanquelin, a celebrated French chemist, found that 
various specimens of yolk contained about the same 
constituents: 1. A soapy matter with a basis of pot- 
ash, which formed a greater part of it. 2. A small 
quantity of carbonate of potash. 38. A perceptible 
quantity of acetate of potash. 4. Lime, whose state 
of combination he was unacquainted with. 5. An 
atom of muriate of potash. 6. An animal oil, to which 
he attributed the peculiar odor of yolk. He found 
the yolk of French and Spanish Merinog essentially 
the same. 
This substance is, then, substantially a soap—and 
the usual terms of grease, oil, etc., are not correctly 
applied to it. It washes freely from the hands, except 
that an unctuous feeling is left by the trace of fatty 
matter in it. The hands of shearers, kept covered 
with it for a number of days, grow perceptibly softer 
and whiter at every washing. 
With a few hours’ previous soaking, it will wash al- 
most entirely out of wool in soft, warmish brook 
water, except perhaps, the external black gum. Let 
sheep be exposed to a warm rain long enough to wet 
through the wool, and let them then be thoroughly 
* In the fleece of the first imported French MerinoI ever opened— 
not apparently a very yolky one, and quite hght colored externally—~ 
I found some of these concretions as large as an ordinary boan 
flattened. 
