ON A METHOD OE OBTAINING IMMEDIATE FIXITY OF 
TYPE IN FORMING A NEW BREED OF SHEEP. 
By M. Malingie-Noule, Director of the Agricultural 
School of La Charmoise ; President of the Agricultural 
Society of Loir et Cher. 
Translated by the late Mr. Pusey. 
It would certainly have been very convenient for French 
farmers if they could have appropriated the results of the 
long labours of the English, who have succeeded, as all the 
world knows, in creating races of sheep the best suited to 
modern requirements. If the thing had been possible it 
ought to have been effected without national jealousy, but, 
unluckily, it was not possible. The chief races of English 
sheep, formed under certain circumstances, cannot remain 
what they are, where those circumstances are altered. In all 
countries south of Great Britain there is a great difficulty in 
fulfilling this condition, and even then the expense is such as 
to swallow the profit. Merinos have been transferred from 
Spain to the north, even as far as Norway and Sweden, but 
English sheep do not thrive when carried southwards to a 
country even so near as France. It seems, therefore, almost 
certain that sheep cannot be moved so easily from north to 
south as from south to north. 
But though the races of English sheep could not be kept 
up in France, we yet might fairly entertain the hope of 
crossing them with our native breeds. Here then a wide 
field opened itself for experiments neither expensive nor, 
as might have been supposed, even difficult. Accordingly 
there arose a host of experimenters, most of whom, unac- 
quainted with the first principles that govern reproduction, 
proceeded headlong in the blind hope that chance would 
afford them that happy solution which they were unable 
to ask of science, and which chance after all did not give 
them. 
Now, it certainly would be in our power, without quitting 
French breeds, to form a race of our own, perfect in form, 
and possessing, like the English breeds, early maturity, 
with aptitude to fatten. For this purpose we might pursue 
