140 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
raise it up again if it becomes poor or debilitated. 
The vital energies appear to be all exhausted. | 
How often has a zealous beginner paid an extraor- 
dinary price for animals (whether Merinos, South 
Downs, Long-wools of this or that designation, Short- 
Horn cattle, &.), to find that with his utmost pains 
he cannot keep up either their appearance or their 
productiveness? His Merino sheep produce a third 
less wool. The word of promise was kept to the ear 
but broken to the hope. He was told with verbal 
truthfulness that they had yielded this or that enor- 
mous amount of wool and yolk in a year, but he was 
not told that it was In part produced by an unnatural 
and destructive system of forcing ; that he was buy- 
ing a spent hot-bed, capable under no circumstances 
of another such yield, and soon to become worthless. 
If the sheep breeder Aas as good a right as the horse 
breeder to “fit his animals for sale,” it would be an 
insult to common morality and common decency to 
claim that either of them has the right purposely and 
materially to impair the constitution and value of his 
animals, to obtain a readier sale and a higher price 
than neighbors who do not resort to such swindling 
tricks. The only pretence of justification is the old 
one: “Tf my neighbor does so, I must or sell nothing.” 
If this excuse is valid, then every man has a right to 
steal to keep up with thievish neighbors! 
Fortunately the practice is comparatively new and 
limited in our country, so far as regards the American 
Merino sheep. If leading breeders will rigorously 
eschew and brand it with their outspoken condemna- 
tion, it will soon disappear. If they will not, at least 
the buyer has a patent duty in the premises, and that 
