THE 8HEEP. 
173 
possessing so many curves as the refina , occupies the belly, and the 
quarters and thighs, down to the stifle joint. The terceira, or wool of 
the third quality, is found on the head, the throat, the lower part of the 
neck, and the shoulders, terminating at the elbow : the wool yielded by 
the legs, and reaching from the stifle to a little below the hock, forms a 
part of the same division. A small quantity of very inferior wool is 
procured from the tuft that grows on the forehead and cheeks — from the 
tail, and from the legs below the hock. 
The Spanish wool continues to be highly valued by the manufacturer; 
and the Spanish breed of sheep will be regarded with interest as the 
improver of the best old short-wooled ones, and the parent of a new race, 
spreading through every quarter of the world, and with which, so far as 
the fleece is concerned, none of the old breeds can be for a moment 
compared. 
Saxon Merinos. — This breed is the result of transferring, nearly a cen- 
tury ago, the best Spanish sheep into Saxony, where they appeared to 
thrive better than in their native region. 
Very great care is taken by the Saxon sheep-master in the selection 
of the lambs which are destined to be saved in order to keep up the flock : 
there is no part of the globe in which such unremitting attention is paid 
to the flock. Mr. Charles Howard, in a letter with which he favored the 
author, says, that “when the lambs are weaned, each in his turn is 
placed upon a table, that his wool and form may be minutely observed.” 
The finest are selected for breeding, and receive a first mark. When 
they are one year old, and prior to shearing them, another close examina- 
tion of those previously marked takes place : those in which no defect 
can be found, receive a second mark, and the rest are condemned. A 
few months after, they in like manner receive a third mark, when the 
slightest blemish causes a rejection of the animal. 
The utmost care is also taken in the housing and feeding of their flocks, 
evidently aiming rather at a fine staple of wool, than a hardy race of 
sheep. Mr. Carr, a large sheep-owner in Germany thus describes their 
management and its effects : 
They are always housed at night, even in summer, except in the very 
finest weather, when they arc sometimes folded in the distant fallows, 
but never taken to pasture until the dew is off the grass. In the winter 
they are kept within doors altogether, and are fed with a small quantity 
of sound hay, and every variety of straw, which has not suffered from 
wet, and which is varied at each feed ; they pick it over carefully, eating 
the finer parts, and any grain that may have been left by the threshers. 
Abundance of good water to drink, and rock-salt in their cribs, are 
indispensables They cannot thrive in a damp climate, and it 
is quite necessary that they should have a wide range of dry and hilly 
pasture of short and not over-nutritious herbage. If allowed to feed on 
swampy or marshy ground, even once or twice in autumn, they are sure 
to die of liver complaint in the following spring. If they are permitted 
to eat wet grass, or exposed frequently to rain, they disappear by bund 
reds with consumption. In these countries it is found the higher bred 
the sheep is, especially the Escurial, the more tender. 
The American Saxon sheep have been so largely intermixed with 
