44 
THE SHEEP. 
THE MERINO BREED. 
This experiment excited extreme interest throughout the kingdom. Various individuals endeavoured to cultivate the pure 
race, hut experiments were mainly directed towards crossing the native breeds with Merino rams, in the hope of combining the 
fineness of the Spanish fleece with the economical qualities of the English Sheep. With this design the Merino rams were made 
to cross the Southdown, the Wiltshire, the Leicester, and the Ryelandewes; and in some cases the experiment was reversed, 
and the English rams, especially of the Ryeland breed, were put to the Merino ewes. Many distinguished agriculturists, Mi- 
Coke, now Earl of Leicester, Sir Joseph Banks, the Duke of Bedford, the late Lord Somerville, and others, prose¬ 
cuted these curious and important experiments ; and the writings of Dr Parry and others brought the subject in a prominent 
manner before the country. 
In the year 1804, when the sale took place from His Majesty’s stock, many purchasers, the advocates of the Merino breed, 
came forward, and the Sheep were sold at high, though not at exorbitant prices; the average price of the rams was L.19, 14s. a- 
head, and that of the ewes L.8 : 15 : 6. In the following autumn a similar sale took place at advancing prices. Seventeen rams 
and twenty-one ewes were sold for L.1148, 14s., being at the average rate of L.30 : 4 : 6. At succeeding sales these rates were 
maintained or increased. In 1810 thirty-three rams brought L.1920, 9s., or L.38 : 9 : 11 a-head, and seventy ewes, the average 
rate of about L.37, 10s. 
In the year 1811 a society was established under the presidency of the distinguished and indefatigable Sir Joseph Banks, 
with the express design of promoting and encouraging the cultivation of the Merino breed. Fifty-four vice-presidents were 
named, and local committees established in almost every district, or county, of England. This Society, the most influential from 
its numbers and the agricultural skill of its members that had yet been established in Britain, pursued their task with spirit and 
zeal. Amongst other means adopted for promoting the purposes of this institution, was the offering of premiums for pure 
Merinos, or for the crosses with the native Sheep. Every thing favoured the purposes of this patriotic band, and in an especial 
degree the unexampled prosperity of the landed interests of the country, and the enormous prices of the finest class of wools, pro¬ 
duced by the events of the war. 
Public opinion, however, and the practical judgment of farmers, had, even before this period, been reducing the pretensions 
of the Merino breed, and the mixed progeny, to the proper standard, as the subjects of economical culture. It was found, that 
however promising were the crosses at first, the progeny invariably fell short of the expectations formed. They were small in size, 
less hardy than the British parents, and generally of inferior form. So perfectly have time and experience confirmed these 
results, that there scarcely exists, except in the hands of the curious, a single flock of the mixed progeny from which so much was 
anticipated. They have either been abandoned altogether, or the breeders have gradually recrossed with English blood until 
almost all traces of the Spanish mixture have been lost. 
In place, however, of attempts to engraft the Spanish upon the English stock, other breeders preserved the pure Merinos, 
and this experiment was greatly more successful than the other. The naturalized Merinos have been found to increase in size, in 
disposition to fatten, in the power of the females to yield milk, and, by attention in breeding, to improve in the external form. 
The wool becomes longer, and loses somewhat, though not much, of its tenuity, unless indeed the means are taken to secure the 
animals, as in Saxony, from cold, the necessary effect of which is to call forth a greater production of wool for the protection of 
the animal. The naturalized Merinos have never acquired the hardiness of the native races, and would perish at once on the 
mountains on which the Welsh, the Cheviot, and the Black-faced Heath-breeds are acclimated. Nevertheless, analogy conducts us 
to the conclusion, that the Merinos are capable of becoming by degrees adapted to the climate in which they are reared. 
The objections to the cultivation of Merinos in the British Islands are not that they cannot be reared, inured to the cold, and 
improved in form, with a moderate preservation of the characters of the wool, but that they do not, as a breed, equal in economical 
importance those of which we are already possessed. The wool, indeed, is the most valuable and abundant of that of any race of 
Sheep that we can rear ; but the wool is not the only profitable produce of Sheep in this country; and it is by a combination of 
the production of mutton and wool that the interests of the farmer are best served. The breed is in the countiy, can be obtained 
by every one, and has been the subject of trial by the best farmers, and yet we see it almost every where abandoned in favour of 
the native races. Did the British farmer, like the Saxon, derive his principal profit from the fleece, and little from the carcass, 
then he might cultivate the production of the one in preference to the other ; but this is not the case under the present circum¬ 
stances of this country, and the British farmer’s interest is therefore different. He cannot afford to shut the animals in houses for 
half the year for the purpose of protecting them from the inclemency of the weather, in order that their wool may be fine; nor 
to feed them on hay and corn, in preference to the abundant roots, herbage, and forage plants, with which the agriculture of the 
country enables him to supply his animals. 
If individual interest does not admit of the cultivation of fine wool in preference to abundant mutton, and the adoption of a 
