FINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 171 
and manipulations of sheep husbandry are simple and 
readily acquired. On no other domestic animal is the 
hazard of loss by death so small. It is as healthy and 
hardy as other animals, and unlike all the others, if 
decently managed, a good sheep can never die in the 
debt of man. If it dies at birth,it has consumed 
nothing. If it dies the first winter, its wool will pav 
for its consumption up to that period. If it lives to 
be sheared once, it brings its owner into debt to it; 
and if the ordinary and natural course of wool pro- 
duction and breeding goes on, that indebteduess will in- 
crease uniformly and with accelerating rapidity until 
the day of its death. If the horse or the steer die at 
three or four years old, or the cow before breeding, the 
loss is almost a total one. 
I am aware that it iseasy to warm one’s self up in 
praising a favorite pursuit, and to make a plausible 
show of reasons for what will not stand the test of 
experiment. But here we deal with fixed data. I 
refer you to the column of prices for which wool has 
sold in our country. If the cost of keeping sheep 
through the same periods is fairly estimated, it will 
be seen that with prime animals no other branch of 
agriculture has yielded better or more uniform returns 
on the capital invested. 
washed wool at the next shearing, and so small a number of this class 
of sheep ought to raise 100 per cent. of lambs. If a choice Merino 
fam is used, the lambs, when grown, will shear at least a pound of 
wool more a head than their dams. And nearly an equal improve- 
ment can be made in the neat generation. JI have, more than once, 
witnessed a more rapid improvement than this. Even the common 
fair Merino rams of the country often increase the dam’s fleece half a 
pound in the progeny for two or three generations, commencing on low 
grade ewes. 
