FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 145 
blood which has flowed so long in one distinct chan- 
nel, and through animals so closely alike in all their 
properties, that it has acquired a power resembling 
that of species—a power continuously to reproduce 
animals of the same family and almost the same indi- 
vidual characteristics. Under this definition the un- 
sightly ass may have as high and pure blood as the 
winged courser of Arabia—the miserable, hairy, broad- 
tailed sheep of Asia and Africa, as the far descended 
Merino of Spain. 
The ram should not only then have a faultless pedi- 
gree, but, if practicable, be drawn from an old, dis- 
tinct, well-marked family of Merinos that have been 
the same as a whole and uniform among themselves 
for a long course of generations. I used to notice, 
when I dabbled in crosses between Merinos and coarse 
breeds, that a ram which was the produce of in-and-in 
breeding stamped his properties on the mongrel off- 
spring with peculiar force; and I am not certain this 
rule dves not obtain to some degree among full bloods. 
J am inclined to question whether the great cavanas 
of Spain, some of them once numbering 40,000 sheep, 
would ever have acquired their remarkable identity 
of characteristics without that in-and-in breeding to 
which they were subjected. Some intelligent observer 
of them in Spain, fifty or sixty years ago, whose name 
I do not now remember, said that in every hundred 
there were ten rather better and ten rather worse ones, 
but that the other eighty could hardly be distinguish- 
ed one from another. 
The second property I have noticed in the ram, 
which gives him the power strongly to impress his 
qualities on his offspring, is constitutional vigor. He 
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