“I can’t quite tell you the size,” said Dr. Cunningham, after assumed cogitation. “It was pretty big. There were about a quarter of a million sheep with it.”
The American looked from one to the other, and expectorated at the stove in a discontented manner. After a minute or two he started in again.
“We get a good figure for our stock hereabouts,” he observed; “we breed for quality. I guess wool is your strong suit. Now what about is your figure per sheep over there?”
Again Deakin referred to Cunningham, the authority.
“What was it Murray of Adelaide was asking for that merino ram of his, Cunningham—it was called Lion II, I believe?”
“I don’t know what he was asking,” returned Cunningham swiftly, “but I can tell you what he got for it. He took eleven hundred guineas.”
The American looked from one to the other and swallowed hard.
“Thunder!” he said. “Give me cattle!”
* * * * *
Well, we didn’t see the quarter of a million sheep, and Mr. Murray’s thousand-guinea ram lives only in portraiture in the hall of his farm; but we did see some of the famous herd of which Lion II was the congener. They had been rounded up for us, about fifty of them, in one of the shearing yards; and most attractive animals they were. Their thick merino fleece was about five inches deep, like soft fibre, and their thick necks were in folds—concertina folds, as they are called. They have been bred to this type, and their peculiar scientific interest is the information which they afford to the explorers of Mendelian principles of the permanence of the so-called “factors of heredity.” But to the practical stock-breeder their immediate interest is the vast amount of wool they yield. Mr. Murray said (if memory is not at fault) that they each yielded about fifteen pounds’ weight of wool at a shearing.