146 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
should be thoroughly masculine. He should be com- 
pact and massive in every part—his large scrotum 
almost sweeping the ground. He should not have a 
particle of a “ewe-look” about him. Even his fleece 
should not be as fine as a ewe’s fleece. He should 
have strength to knock down anox. He should have 
undaunted courage and delight in battle—fghting 
with desperate determination until slain or acknowl- 
edged master of the flock! I have often seen a ram 
that if shut in a barn would go through the side of it 
at a single blow like a catapult. Other things being 
equal, such are more usually, according to my experi- 
ence, the rams which transmit their characteristics to 
their descendants. 
But where blood and constitutional vigor are appar- 
ently equal, there is still an undeniable difference in 
this particular—how occasioned it is impossible to say. 
No one can pronounce confidently that he has a prime 
sire ram until the ram has been actually tested. Un- 
less found to produce highly excellent and highly un- 
jorm ofispring, the showiest and costliest animal 
should be promptly abandoned.* 
The wonderful ram of mine mentioned in Sheep 
Husbandry in the South,t whose wool Dr. Emmons 
proved, by actual admeasurement, to be finer than 
* The noblest figure of a ram I ever saw, without an exception, and 
‘an animal for which the owner had paid a high price two or three 
years before, was under my eye a short time since. After looking at 
him, I asked to see the lambs gotten by him the preceding year. The 
owner had none to show. He had not used him, “because, &c.,” but 
had used a ram of comparatively insignificant appearance. In the 
face of such a fact, all the excuses in the world would not tempt a 
sensible man to give $10 for a brute which cost over $200. 
+ At page 135, 
