FIXITY OF TYPE IN THE BREED OF SHEEP. 
569 
English blood, and disappear almost entirely, leaving the 
improving type in the ascendant. The influence, in fact, of 
this type was so decided and so predominant, that all the 
lambs produced strickingly resembled each other, and even 
Englishmen took them for animals of their own country. 
But, what was still more decisive, when these young ewes 
and rams were put together, they produced lambs closely 
resembling themselves, without any marked return to the 
features of the old French races from which the grandmother 
ewes were derived. Some slight traces only might perhaps 
be detected here and there by an experienced eye. Even 
these, however, soon disappeared, such animals as showed 
them being carefully weeded out of the breeding flock. This 
may certainly be called (i fixing a breed ” when it becomes 
every year more capable of reproducing itself with uniform 
and marked features. Such was my secret, which, however, 
has been made no secret at all, but has been declared from 
the first in my entries at the shows of Poissy and Versailles. 
Such is the origin of the La Charmoise breed of sheep. 
We have already seen how important it is that you should 
not infuse into a new breed more than 50 per cent, of 
English blood, if you would preserve the French constitution, 
which alone suits the circumstances in which they have to 
pass their lives. The Charmoise breed not exceeding that 
proportion does retain the hardiness of a pure French race : 
the lambs are reared as easily as those of any French breed, 
getting over the summer just as easily : neither then nor 
later do they suffer more than our native breeds from heat or 
from drought. 
The mixed-blood mothers had been formed from breeds 
in general small, and possessing the usual qualities of small 
breeds, delicacy of shape, smallness of the head and the 
bony structure, temperance as to food. The Merinos alone 
had not these valuable qualities, but they entered in the pro- 
portion of 25 per cent, only into the mothers, and con- 
sequently of 12J per cent, only into the offspring. Their 
disadvantage, too, in these respects was compensated by 
their influence on the fleece. 
I may here remark that, in founding a breed, it is far better 
to choose ewes from small breeds, with the qualities already 
mentioned, than from breeds that are strongly timbered, bony, 
coarse, greedy, like those of northern and western France, 
which I tried myself, to my own heavy loss. Accordingly 
as fine or coarse ewes are used, so in proportion do the off- 
spring show that coarse or fine character, difficult to describe 
by a writer, but easy to perceive by a connoisseur. 
