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1 June, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 433 
will then be shown how to apply the same to wool-growing particularly. I shall 
thus treat the subject under the following heads, namely :— 
1. The rational principles of breeding as they apply to every species of 
animals and plants. 
2. The wool from a physiological point of view and as a product for the 
market. 
3. Woollen manufacture, as a means of illustration why certain qualities 
of the wool are especially desirable and others are not so. 
4. The methods to be adopted in improving a breed of sheep. 
5. An historical sketch of the development of fine wool-growing in the 
different countries where merinos are kept. 
The chief purpose for which domestic animals are bred is the conyersion of 
vegetable food into animal products, such as milk, meat, wool, &c., which are in 
reality nothing else but more desirable forms, and we may consider a sheep farm 
with the words of a celebrated French sheep-breeder, Matthieu de Dombasle, 
as an establishment for the changing of vegetable farm produce or pasture by 
the agency of sheep into money, and it is evident that those animals answer the 
purposes of the breeder best that produce the greatest returns for comparatively 
small quantities of food consumed, and: for comparatively small amounts of 
outlay that have been invested in them. 
In order to carry on the breeding of any of our domestic animals with 
financial success we must be guided by nothing but strictly practical principles. 
We must carefully avoid, therefore, any notions that may be the result of 
prejudice. We rear wool-growing sheep for different purposes than we do 
racehorses, pigeons, or canaries. Our ideal of the most perfect sheep should be 
closely connected with its suitability for our purposes, and this again can only 
be obtained by paying the fullest attention to every particular that has to 
contribute its share in making up the results we desire. 
The believers in the traditions of the Bible mostly maintain that the 
domestic animals of our days were created for the special purpose of serving 
mankind, and were at the very beginning invested by the Creator with those 
qualities which render them now so useful to us. 
Others believe that our horses, cattle, sheep, &c., have descended from. 
originally wild animals, that were caught, probably when young, and were 
domesticated. Notwithstanding the traditions of the Bible, we are justified in 
believing that it is by the last-named method rather that our ancestors obtained. 
animals suitable for their services. It is highly probable that our horses have 
descended from the ancestors of those horses now running wild in some parts: 
of Asia; our cattle from those of the wild Urox or Aurox still at large in the 
forests of Russia, or from other wild cattle (Ohillingham). The fine-woolled 
sheep of our times were obtained in the same way, but the races from which 
they were originally derived are probably extinct. It is very unlikely that our 
fine and heavy woolled sheep have descended from ancestors haying no wool at 
all, but short coarse hair, such as the muflon, &e. : 
If we assume that animals and plants came ito existence by a mysterious 
act, called creation, brought about by the will of an: individual being, there is 
no room left for further inquiry, and we must then accept it as a fact that the — 
present condition of animals and plants is the result of the Creator's will, and 
not of any laws, or, as Socrates called it, “necessities Innate 1m natural objects.””.. 
Matters, however, assume a very different aspect if, without binding ourselves 
to a certain time-honoured belief, we carefully investigate the facts which the 
history of our earth has brought to light. 
From what geology teaches us, we must conclude that our globe has under- 
gone a variety of changes, and we can trace, from the fossils and their sur- 
roundings, a gradual development of animals and plants from very low forms of 
life into their present state of perfection. It has also been proved that these: 
changes in the condition of our earth were not always brought about by violent 
actions of a yoleanic nature, but mostly gradually, and that the same causes, to 
