Page:Acclimatisation; its eminent adaptation to Australia.djvu/14

12 other rams having the same quality of wool. The produce of 1830 included only one ram and one ewe having the silky quality of the wool; that of 1831 produced four rams and one ewe with the fleece of that quality. In 1833, the lambs with the silky variety of wool were very numerous. In each subsequent year the lambs were of two kinds—one preserving the character of the ancient race with the curled, elastic wool, only a little longer and finer than in the ordinary Merinos: the other resembling the rams of the new breed, some of which retained the large head, long neck, narrow chest, and long flanks of the abnormal progenitor, while others combined the ordinary and better formed body with the fine silky wool.

M. Graux, profiting by this partial resumption of the normal type of the Merino in certain of the descendants of the malformed original variety, at length succeeded in obtaining a flock combining the long, fine silky fleece with a smaller head, shorter neck, broader flanks, and more capacious chest. Of this breed the flocks have become sufficiently numerous to enable the proprietor to sell examples of the breed for exportation. This variety, mixed with the ordinary Merino, has also produced a valuable quality of wool, known in France as the "Mauchamp Merino." The fine silky wool of the pure Mauchamp breed is remarkable for its qualities, as combining wool having strength, as well as the length and fineness of the fibre. It is found of great value by the manufacturers of Cashmere shawls, being second only to the true Cashmere fleece in the fine flexible delicacy of the fibre, and of particular utility when combined with the Cashmere wool, in imparting to the manufacture qualities of strength and consistence in which pure Cashmere is deficient. This valuable variety ought to be introduced and acclimatised in this colony.

The comparative moist climate of England is unfavourable to the development of the highest qualities of wool; but they breed sheep for mutton superior to any in the world—not for wool, which it is now ascertained can be produced cheaper than at home in the temperate climates of Australia and New Zealand, and Southern Africa.

Some Shanghai sheep, recently introduced into this colony by Mr. Henry Moore, have wool perfectly white. They possess great reproductive powers, and breed twice in a year, and produce four and five at a birth, the three ewes in the Zoological Gardens of London having in the spring produced thirteen lambs.

Among other valuable animals which may be acclimatised