330 
fVbol in Relation to Science with Practice. 
upon ; it is most favourable for the rapid falling away of earthy 
matter.* Swedish sheep are always washed on their backs ; tub- 
washing — they say that they cannot cleanse if they brook-wash. 
Spout-washing, t 5 or 6 feet fall, has long been practised in Ger- 
many : first on head and shoulders, then on belly, the sheep is 
reversed, lastly, on back ; the sheep is first soaped in a trough, 
and all this done at a cost, per head, of one penny. Those who 
visited the London International Exhibition of 1871 may re- 
member the apparatus for washing wool on the sheep, and also 
that for sheep-shearing, both on a grand scale. The principal 
features of the complete apparatus for steam-power sheep- 
washing, now used by some of the greatest wool-growers in the 
world, are shortly these : a rain-yard, hot-water tank, swim- 
ming-tank, and lastly, for finishing off, a cage of tubes, with inner 
and all-round perforations, which squirt converging jets of water 
upon the centrally-placed sheep. I am charmed to find that, 
quite independently, the well-known engineering firm, Messrs. 
Gwynne, the eminent exhibitors in question, are travelling with 
me by a road of their own towards the same longed-for desti- 
nation ; I need only add, in addition to their obliging com- 
munication which follows, that it is to be hoped that they, with 
many of my readers and myself, may meet together in the 
show-yard at Taunton : — 
" We have at present in prospect an entirely new operation for purifying 
wool, which will enable us to cleanse it thoroughly from all impurities, and 
make it fit for the market at a merely nominal cost ; or, in other words, that 
the waste product we derive from the washing of the wool will more than pay 
the cost of washing." 
Statistics. — A chapter on the political economy now involved 
would be interesting, but with a very few words we must pass on 
to its essential statistical handmaiden. We see in imagination the 
finger of the Editor good-naturedly uplifted to warn us, that in 
the ' Journal,' as in this old and populous country, all available 
space must be carefully husbanded. The food of the people in 
England is the English farmer's chief consideration : trans- 
oceanic competition is even fast driving the Continental farmer 
from the wool to the carcass : yet it must ever be remembered 
that the means of obtaining food depends on industrial employ- 
ment : nearly the greatest of English industries depends on 
wool, a cultivated article regularly cropped. The question of 
wool supply can never be disregarded, especially the supply of 
the invaluable English long wool so useful in assisting to work 
* See Mr. Cox's sketch, page 341. 
t In a pleasant note, which is much like the writer, my colleague, Mr. Mihvard, 
tells me spout- washing was established at Tburgarton at the end of the last ccnturr, 
and in combination witli a wooden T-like instrument, to work the sheep's back, 
the practice has since been advantageously continued. 
