The wool is about the quality of Leicester, coarse and long, suitable only for the manufacture of low coatings and flushings. It closely covers the body, assisting much in preserving it from the effects of wet and cold. The fleece averages about three and a half pounds. Formerly, the wool was extensively employed in making cloths; but having given place to the finer Saxony wools, it has sunk in price, and been confined to combing purposes. It has thus become altogether a secondary consideration.
The Cheviots have become an American sheep by their repeated importations into this country. The wool on several choice sheep, imported by Mr. Carmichael, of New York, was from five to seven inches long, coarse, but well suited to combing.
THE LINCOLN.
The old breed of Lincolnshire sheep was hornless, had white faces, and long, thin, and weak carcasses; the ewes weighed from fourteen to twenty pounds a quarter; the three-year old wethers from twenty to thirty pounds; legs thick, rough and white; pelts thick; wool long—from ten to eighteen inches—and covering a slow-feeding, coarse-grained carcass of mutton.
A judicious system of breeding, which avoided Bakewell’s errors, has wrought a decided improvement in this breed. The improved Lincolns possess a rather more desirable robustness, approaching, in some few specimens, almost to coarseness, as compared with the finest Leicesters; but they are more hardy, and less liable to disease. They attain as large a size, and yield as great an amount of wool, of about the same value. This breed, indeed, scarcely differs more from the Cotswold than do flocks of a similar variety, which have been separately bred for several generations, from each other. They are prolific, and when well-fed, the ewes will frequently produce two lambs at a birth, for which they provide liberally from their udders till the time for weaning. The weight of the fleece varies from four to eight pounds per head.
Having alluded to the principal points of interest connected with the various breeds of sheep in the United States, our next business is with
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SHEEP.
