Sheep Washing. 
153 
the petroleum lamp, such oils as are required by the Eteve-Priestman 
engine are now readily procurable, even in the most remote villages, 
and are, as is well known, perfectly safe for transport, while they 
load better than coal for the road, and are more snugly stored. 
4. Skilled Attention . — The oil-engine requires no driver or stoker. 
It may be set to work, and then locked up, or otherwise left 
to its own devices, and it will continue, up to the limit of its power, 
to develop such varying energy as may be required of it without 
any attention beyond oiling. Only skill enough to follow a few 
plain printed directions, for the occasional renewal of the simple 
voltaic battery which effects the explosion of the mixed gases in the 
cylinder, is required. 
5. Safety in Use in the Rick-yard . — The exhaust of the oil-engine, 
not being in connection with any furnace, requires no cage on the 
chimney-top, and cannot throw sparks into the air. There is no 
firebox, and no fire to be drawn at the end of the day’s work. There 
is no boiler-pressure, and no safety-valve, and there is no possibility, 
in cold weather, of a feed-pipe being burst by residual water. A 
match is all that is required for a start, and no time is lost over 
“ getting up steam.” 
It seems now, indeed, worth the farmer’s while to consider 
the question of oil against coal, always taking care, when choosing 
an oil-motor, to avoid such engines as may be chargeable with 
either of the defects described, against which it is the chief 
object of this note to warn those who may already be looking into 
this matter. 
Dan Pidgeon. 
SHEEP WASHING. 
Why do British farmers wash their sheep? Is it to benefit the 
animal, or is it for the sake of the wool ? If it is for the benefit of 
the sheep, and they are improved by the operation, why not give all 
animals on the farm an annual tubbing ? If it is on account of the 
wool, I hope to be able to show that farmers are incurring an annual 
expenditure and giving themselves needless trouble, which in these 
bad times might be avoided. 
Up to within a very recent period I grant that most manufac- 
turers could only use wool that had been washed by the farmer, and 
that from the time of the establishment of the English woollen in- 
dustry, in the year 1333, in the country town of Kendal, from which 
I write, up to the last ten or twenty years, it was essential for the 
sale of the wool that it should be well washed on the sheep’s back, 
as the bulk of it was spun and manufactui’ed in this state, the manu- 
facturer in those days not being equipped with machinery to wash 
and dry the fleece. 
Since the introduction of the steam engine, and the combing 
machine, and also of improved spinning and washing machinery, a 
