148 FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
ent stand-points are conflicting and will contlict so 
long as the grower can sell grease and tur and yolk 
and. oil at same price as wool. Our farmers have no 
desire to learn how little wool they sell; they prefer 
to be instructed in the secret of adding dirt and un- 
washed tags and dung-locks covered with fleece and 
wound with two to four ounces of rope yarn called 
twine.” 
This is a fair statement of the case on both sides, 
only the writer should have added that in many cases 
farmers have intentionally and greatly lowered the 
quality of the wool itself in order to get more weight. 
I have already clearly taken the ground that medium 
wools are more profitable than the finest for general 
production in our country; but is it not a pity to see 
the good, even, true, elastic, sound and soft wool 
which the American Merino inherited from his Span- 
ish ancestors, degraded in every particular—put on a 
par in value with halfblood wool—mixed with hair 
and jar—and all this done intentionally? Yet who 
is to wonder at it and at the additional commixture 
of filth and rope yarn, if the wool buyer will pay 
within three or four cents a pound as much for this 
compound of abominations as for good clean wool! 
And there is another party who is found quite as 
ready to encourage this line of breeding and manage- 
ment as the manufacturer, namely, the ram buyer. 
Does he inquire what amount of good, well-washed, 
slean wool is produced by the animal he wishes to 
purchase? By no means. He only wishes to ascer- 
tain what aggregate wool, yolk and dirt can be sheared 
from it and called a fleece. He has two objects in 
view. He wants a ram surcharged with yolk for the 
