SHEEP AND WOOL. 
409 
for we find the man of that time eating the mutton, and 
using the skins for clothing until he learned to weave the 
wool, and then he made cloth garments. Now we have 
what are called breeds of sheep, and those breeds of sheep 
are somewhat difficult for persons not acquainted with agri¬ 
culture to determine. We may divide them into the old 
mountain sheep, the early inhabitants of our island, and 
those more recently introduced, which are sheep of the 
plains. You all know the little Welsh sheep having a leg 
not weighing more than two or three pounds, hardly enough 
for a strong man's dinner. They have so small a crop of 
wool that it is hardly worth while shearing them, therefore 
they are going out of fashion. There are people from Wales 
who like Welsh sheep as the Scotch like Scotch sheep, and 
thus the kind is kept up. But there would have been no 
Leeds and no Bradford if there had been none other than 
Welsh sheep. Little sheep generally bear small fleeces. 
The Welsh and Irish generally yield no more than two 
pounds and the Leicester as much as eight pounds, and in 
America we have recently been informed they have a fleece 
of eighteen pounds. The tendency in this country in the 
breed has been to get a large amount of wool, but at the 
same time you ought to know that in this country we do not 
produce the finest kind of wool. The long wool sheep yield 
a valuable produce, but it is the short wool sheep which 
produces the most valuable. That, however, fails to equal 
the short wool sheep of Germany, of America, and more 
especially of Australia, and all these are surpassed by the 
Spanish sheep. The merino sheep, originally reared in Spain, 
produces the finest quality of wool for the manufacturer. 
This wool is short, and covered with a sticky secretion, and 
we can easily see in this wool that it makes the finest quality 
of cloth that is worn. Hence it was that, many years ago, 
the attempt was made to introduce the breeds of merino into 
England. They succeeded to a certain extent, but our 
climate was too damp and not sufficiently warm to develop 
their produce, and I believe there is not now a single merino 
sheep in this country, although thousands of pounds have 
been spent in the attempt to breed them. Our manufacturers 
obtain their merino wool from Spain, but at one time the law 
forbade the importation and exportation of wool, and we 
were then confined to the produce of our own soil. It w r as 
at that time that the sheep were introduced from Spain. 
Spain has lost much of her prestige and much of her indus¬ 
try, and when one hears of the climate of Spain and the 
vast resources of that country, one grieves to think it is 
