Comparative Profit realized with different Breeds of Sheep. 211

my opinion was decidedly in favour of 30 inches depth, but I wished others to be convinced, and accordingly I stated in November, 1849, to the Agricultural Society of this county (Notts), that I would have a field drained at three different depths. This was done in February, 1850; the field is 8 acres, and contains 15 furrows, so that there were 5 for 2 feet; 5 for 2 feet; 5 for 4 feet. The lands are all of the same width, between 6 and 7 yards. The field was sown with barley in 1851; seeds pastured in 1852; and the same this year. There has been no perceptible difference in the crops or appearance, and after rain, contrary to the received opinion, the shallow drains begin to run before the others. The field, or in fact the whole of my farm, is open for the inspection of any person, and if I should be from home my bailiff will give every information on the subject.

I intend the field to be sown with oats in 1854, and I hope you will see the crop growing in July, as the Station here is only 24 miles from Lincoln.

Believe me yours very truly,

RICHARD Milward.

-Thurgarton Priory, Southwell, June 2, 1853.

XV.-On the Comparative Profit realized with different breeds of Sheep. By SAMUEL DRUCE.

To Mr. Pusey.

DEAR SIR,-The subjoined table was compiled in reply to a letter from the American minister at Paris, after visiting England on an agricultural tour, when some of the principal flocks were inspected by him, but he had not an opportunity of seeing mine. I was therefore prevented from a personal interview, and consequently conveyed in this form my ideas as to the relative value of the English breeds of sheep, and I have much pleasure in sending it to you at your request.

This subject seems to take the attention and call forth the energies of the farmers in consequence of the advance in the price of wool and mutton. The prices named in the table for Cotswold and shorter wools are nearer on a par this season than they have been for years, in consequence of the great demand there appears to be for coarse fabrics for exportation. In a general way Cotswold wool is from 10 to 15 per cent. lower than cross-bred.

It is nearly twenty years since I began crossing between the Southdown and Cotswold sheep, and with the ordinary skill of sheep-farming I find no difficulty to keep the form and size of the animal as it should be, the wool of a valuable quality and not deficient in quantity; and I maintain that the good qualities can be better secured by employing the cross-bred animals on both sides than by using the first cross. I know of other farmers who can affirm what I now assert.

It is a well-known fact that the layer and situation are of great importance to a flock, and the land I farm, which is of variety of soils, from the strong clay to the burning gravel, seems particularly adapted to this improved cross-breed sort.

It may be well to state the different kinds of food that are grown on the "variety of soils," in order to keep them on the arable land.

In January, swedes or turnips.
February, the same.

March, the same, and mangold.
April, mangold, rye, and vetches.
May, trefolium, vetches, and trefoil.
June, vetches and clover.

In July, summer vetches and clover.
August, rape and vetches.
September, rape and early turnips.
October, early turnips.
November, turnips.

December, turnips and swedes.

The ewes generally run over the pastures from November to January, when they are brought to the yard for lambing; they are fed on the best hay and roots, and sent in the ploughed fields as soon as the lambs get strong.

I remain, dear Sir,

Eynsham, May 25th, 1853.

Yours faithfully,

SAMUEL DRUCE.

(Note by Mr. Pusey.)

I cannot but think that this statement, from so high a practical authority as Mr. Druce, will forcibly attract the attention of flockmasters. According to his estimate, founded chiefly on experience, the results in money, supposing the lambs to be sold as mutton at the year's end, would be as follows::

The difference in favour of the cross-breds is certainly very great; it arises, of course, from the superior quality, and therefore higher price per pound, of the mutton as compared with longwoolled sheep, and the superior weight of wool and of mutton as compared with short-woolled sheep. Mr. Druce would be the last man to say that his own experience should decide farmers who keep flocks on a different kind of land, where the figures doubtless might come out very differently, or to recommend the abandonment of any of our improved breeds-Leicester or Cotswold long-wools, Sussex or Hampshire short-wools. The question is, not whether we should give up any of these, but whether we do not require, in addition, a fifth or middle-wool breed beside them. I believe that we do, for half-bred sheep of the first cross are yearly brought more and more to market. But the evident disadvantage of the system of using only a first cross is this, that as you do not breed your own ewes, you must purchase some every year; while, as farmers never sell the best of their young ewes, those who thus depend upon purchase cannot keep up a superior breeding flock. The difficulty of establishing a new breed, as is well known, consists in the tendency of the cross for many generations to revert to one or other of the original Still, many farmers have now for some years bred this sheep, intermediate between the long-wool and the down, and have thereby laid a foundation on which, if it be thought fit, others may build. Some light, too, I hope has been thrown on this interesting subject by a French breeder, whose experience forms the subject of the following paper-Pн. P.

races.

XVI.-On a Method of obtaining immediate Fixity of Type in forming a new breed of Sheep. By M. MALINGIE-NOUEL, Director of the Agricultural School of La Charmoise, President of the Agricultural Society of Loire et Cher. Translated by Mr. PUSEY.

It would certainly have been very convenient for French farmers if we could have appropriated the results of the long labours of the English, who have succeeded, as all the world knows, in creating races of sheep the best suited to modern requirements. If the thing had been possible for us, it ought to have been effected without national jealousy, but, unluckily, it was not possible. The chief races of English sheep, formed under certain circumstances, cannot remain what they are, where those circumstances are altered. In all countries south of Great Britain there is great difficulty in fulfilling this condition, and even then the expense is such as to swallow the profit. Merinos have been transferred from Spain to the north, even as far as Norway and Sweden, but English sheep do not thrive when carried southwards to a country even so near as France. It seems, therefore, almost certain that sheep cannot be moved so easily from north to south as from south to north.

But though the races of English sheep could not be kept up in France, we yet might fairly entertain the hope of crossing them with our native breeds. Here then a wide field opened itself for experiments neither expensive nor, as might have been supposed, even difficult. Accordingly there arose a host of experimenters, most of whom, unacquainted with the first principles that govern reproduction, proceeded headlong in the blind hope that chance would afford them that happy solution which they were unable to ask of science, and which chance after all did not give them.

Now, it certainly would be in our power, without quitting French breeds, to form a race of our own, perfect in form, and possessing, like the English breeds, early maturity, with aptitude to fatten. For this purpose we might pursue a course of judicious selection for a long series of years, aiding this selection by a system of constant care and of nutritious food. But besides that such long-winded operations, requiring great perseverance of view and of will, seldom find men determined enough to conceive and, above all, to execute them, they require in fact more than the ordinary life of man, and therefore cannot be carried out without a succession of experimenters animated by the same views, and employing similar means. Such an enterprise cannot be executed unless by a man who, like the founder of the New Kent breed, Richard Goord, commences young, and lives like him eighty-six years.

Method of obtaining immediate Fixity of Type in Sheep. 215

In France such an improvement of a breed in itself or from within has not been even attempted, at least with respect to perfection of form, power of assimilation (or fattening), and quality of meat. As to the wool, indeed, our breeders of Merinos, while their wool was dear, did aim at increased fineness and evenness of fleece by judicious selection, and in some degree too succeeded. But their success is of little interest now that the price of superfine wool has been lowered permanently by the multiplication of Merinos without cost on the untenanted pastures of Australasia.

66

The most devoted partisans of the Merino breed have now for some time felt the necessity for making up in mutton what they were losing in the price of their wool. This they could hardly effect with that boniest of all races unless by alloying in some degree the purity of its blood. At first this degradation was concealed, but, gradually growing bolder, they pronounced at last the word cross." Still it was required that the new animal should preserve the Merino countenance, and that its wool, though coarser, should be fit for the same purposes as before. This latter object was much favoured by a natural law, as well as by the progress of manufactures. In fact, through the improvement of machinery new stuffs are now produced from the coarse wool as delicate as heretofore from the fine.

Hence arose a multiplicity of spurious sheep, denominated justly mongrels, yielding a wool of little value, that could not be compared with the cleaner and stouter wools of Australasia. The two kinds of fleeces show, in fact, the different treatment by which they are produced. Life in the free air and constant pasture, upon the one hand; on the other, the precarious food, the filth and stench of close yards, to which most of our French flocks are to this day exposed. The depreciation of the wool of the mongrels cannot stop even at its present point, for the product of Australasia must go on increasing under the continuance of peace, and the progress of marine intercourse, which tends to draw closer the communion of nations-as close as that of provinces in the middle ages. But if the wool of our mongrels bears small promise of future profit, those sheep have certainly little to recommend them in point of mutton, which retains the taint of their origin.

This disfigured foreign race, then, is in the same case with the old native races of our ancient France that have withstood better than she herself has done the endless revolutions of which she has been the sport. These breeds satisfied the simple requirements of our ancestors, but in our days you might as well try to restore the coarse clothes worn by those ancestors and the frugal life which they led, as propose to satisfy the demands of our manufacturers and the wants of our increased population from breeds with coarse wool and unthrifty frame, subsisting miserably