FIXITY OF TYPE IN THE BREED OF SHEEP. 513 
a course of judicious selection for a long series of years, 
aiding this selection by a system of constant care and of 
nutritious food. But besides that such long-winded ope- 
rations, requiring great perseverance of viewand of will, seldom 
find men determined enough to conceive and, above all, to 
execute them, they require in fact more than the ordinary 
life of man, and therefore cannot be carried out without a 
succession of experimenters animated by the same views, and 
employing similar means. Such an enterprise cannot be 
executed unless by a man who, like the founder of the New 
Kent breed, Richard Goord, commences young, and lives 
like him eighty-six years. 
In France such an improvement of a breed in itself or from 
within has not been even attempted, at least with respect to 
perfection of form, power of assimilation (or fattening), and 
quality of meat. As to the wool, indeed, our breeders of 
Merinos, while their wool was dear, did aim at increased 
fineness and evenness of fleece by judicious selection, and in 
some degree too succeeded. But their success is of little 
interest now that the price of superfine wool has been lowered 
permanently by the multiplication of Merinos without cost 
on the untenanted pastures of Australasia. 
The most devoted partisans of the Merino breed have now 
for some time felt the necessity for making up in mutton 
what they were losing in the price of their wool. This they 
could hardly effect with that boniest of all races unless by 
alloying in some degree the purity of its blood. At first this 
degradation was concealed, but, gradually growing bolder, 
they pronounced at last the word “cross.” Still it was 
required that the new animal should preserve the Merino 
countenance, and that its wool, though coarser, should be fit 
for the same purposes as before. This latter object was much 
favored by a natural law, as well as by the progress of manu- 
factures. In fact, through the improvement of machinery, 
new stuffs are now.produced from the coarse wool as delicate 
as heretofore from the fine. 
Hence arose a multiplicity of spurious sheep, denominated 
justly mongrels , yielding a wool of little value, that could not 
be compared with the cleaner and stouter wools of Austra- 
lasia. The two kinds of fleeces show, in fact, the different 
treatment by which they are produced. Life in the free air 
and constant pasture, upon the one hand ; on the other, the 
precarious food, the filth and stench of close yards, to which 
most of our French flocks are to this day exposed. The 
depreciation of the wool of the mongrels cannot stop even at 
its present point, for the product of Australasia must go on 
xxx. 68 
