FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 159 
partly for wool-growing purposes, it is more profitable 
to grow full blood Merinos. In the State of New 
York we could, by the substitution of fine, heavy 
fleeces for those now carried by our grade sheep, profit- 
ably grow 200 per cent. more of mutton in the wool- 
growing districts than we now do. 
I shall nowhere, however, be understood to advance 
the idea that it would be advisable in the mutton dis- 
tricts proper (where access to a good market is quick 
and cheap) to substitute the Merino for the best Eng- 
lish mutton varieties. Though I am not prepared 
to speak from adequate experience on that point, the 
tenor of reliable testimony would seem to be clearly 
the other way. 
For mutton purposes the Merino can promptly and 
readily be rendered more valuable than it now is 
without a diminution of the quality and quantity of 
its wool. It probably could not be made to assume 
so early a maturity as the New Leicester or the South 
Down, or their peculiar forms; but Prof. Wilson has 
told us what the pure Merino will weigh at two years 
old, when fed as the other English breeds are which 
exhibit such marvellous earliness of maturity. Early 
feeding and early maturity have an inseparable con- 
nection; and those who have bred English New Leices- 
ter sheep, and fed them only hay and grass, and treat- 
ed them as we treat our other sheep, have found that 
much of their early maturity has vanished. But 
without reference to this consideration, we have not, 
in a country so large in proportion to its population, 
and where it is so easy consequently to supply the de- 
mands of its meat market without killing animals at 
an early age, occasion, certainly in large portions of 
