1909.] The Financial Aspect of Sheep-washing. 17 



present, and it is not likely that the farmer will succeed in 

 selling him grease for wool, even if he intended doing so. 



(5) Where wool is washed, the cost for carriage per lb. of 

 actual wool is less. — Whether 100 lb, of wool contains 2 or 

 30 lb. of dirt, the railway companies' charge on the 

 actual 70 lb. of wool in the latter case is exactly as much as 

 they charge for the 98 lbs. in the former case, Thus the 

 actual freight on wool bought in Cornwall to go to Bradford, 

 or say at Guildford to go to Huddersfield, may mean a 

 considerable increment on the price per lb. actually given at 

 the sale, especially where such wool is in the unwashed 

 condition ; hence the buyer gives a sufficiently low price to 

 allow for this. In the extract from Mr. Hargreaves' article 

 on "Sheep-washing," Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, 

 1893, already given (p. 3), the last sentence quoted shows 

 that the wool generally dealt with around Kendal is 

 clipped from sheep which spend the whole of the year on 

 grass ; and if clean grass land formed the lair for all sheep, 

 there might not be so great an advantage in washing them, 

 as in that case the amount of dirt present would be fairly 

 uniform ; but when the rule in many districts is for sheep to 

 be on the arable land all the year round, or at any rate 

 during the winter months, those sheep whose lair is the 

 wettest, and the soil of which is the stickiest, will naturally 

 collect a larger amount of foreign matter in the wool than 

 those lying on a drier and more porous soil, hence the great 

 variation in the amount of dirt found in the wool of sheep on 

 different kinds of soil. 



In Scotland, as already mentioned, the bulk of the wool is 

 unwashed, probably for two reasons : first, that a large 

 proportion of the sheep are grass-fed all the year round, and, 

 secondly, that a very large proportion of the sheep are Black- 

 faced Scotch, which clip a very inferior quality of fleece, 

 the character of the wool being such that it can only be used 

 for the coarser class of yarns; as already mentioned, it is 

 largely used for carpet manufacture, and goes from this 

 country to America as "carpet wool." The price of this 

 wool was quoted last July in Inverness at 4|d. unwashed, 

 while unwashed Hampshire, for example, was making Sd. 

 If the 4jd. Blackfaced wool were washed it would tend to 



c 



