132 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
certainly profitable to add as much of it to the fleece 
as is consistent with the greatest product of wool. 
But I think it admits of no dispute that the excessive 
amount sometimes seen—giving to the long fleece, 
under a hot autumn or spring sun, the appearance of 
having been literally soaked in some oily fluid, is not 
often the accompaniment of a specially thick fleece, 
or of one which gives the best account of itself after 
scouring.* ‘The heaviest fleeced flocks of our country 
do not present this appearance. Perhaps such an ex- 
cess of secretion in one direction withdraws it from 
other and concurrent channels. This suspicion is cer- 
tainly reasonable, if yolk, as has been believed among 
both the learned and unlearned, constitutes a portion 
of the pabulum of wool. , 
Few persons, perhaps, understand how great a quan- 
tity of yolk is really found in some fleeces. Chester 
Moses, an intelligent woolen manufacturer of Marcel- 
lus, New York, writes me that in 1861 he cleansed a 
ram’s fleece, which weighed in the yolk 19} Ibs., and 
“found 4 Ibs. of wool.” The owner had paid a large 
price for the animal. Mr. Moses has reported to me, 
in conversation, a number of other equally strong cases, 
but as he asks in his letter to be “spared from saying 
more,” I do not feel at liberty to cite them. 
All Merino rams’ fleeces waste much more in cleans- 
ing than ewes’ fleeces, but will any one undertake to 
say that it is good legitimate breeding to grow rams 
even whose natural fleeces will shrink nearly four- 
fifths in washing! Breeding such sheep may lead 
* The idea advanced by most of our early writers on Merinos, that 
the more the yolk the finer the fleece, is now utterly exploded. 
