THE "COMING SHEEP.

223

and clipping 4 lbs. of fine wool; but, looking at the extraordinary improvements to be effected by judicious breeding, and at our soil, climate, and washing facilities, I believe it to be quite possible that we may eventually produce a pure New Zealand Merino, which shall weigh 80 lbs., and which shall annually clip a 5 lb. fleece, worth 2s. a lb.* Indeed, the effects of careful breeding are already becoming evident in a manner highly flattering to our flock-masters: a Mr. Rich, an eminent grazier, near Auckland, has frequently obtained high prices for his rams for exportation to Australia; and on a visit which he lately paid to Europe, in order to inspect the finest flocks of the continent, some samples of his Auckland wool were so highly prized by Baron Damier, Superintendent of the Imperial French Merino flock at Rambouillet, that it is reported the Baron requested Mr. Rich to send him a few of his Auckland rams in order to improve even the famous "Rambouillet Flock."

A few Cotswold, Cheviot, South-Down, Leicester, and RomneyMarsh sheep, have been brought out by agricultural emigrants who have come from the counties in which these breeds are esteemed the best, and who, ignorant alike of the great object of New Zealand sheep-farming, and of the merits of the Merino, have from boyhood, believed that their local English varieties were the plus ultra of perfection.

But it is well observed in the interesting letters from a New Zealand flock-master, and from an eminent English woolstapler, given in the first edition of this work-and which, if space permits, will be given in an Appendix to this-that the true end and aim of New Zealand graziers should be not to produce meat or tallow, or short clothing wool, but to produce the very finest possible fleece of "combing" wool. To enable us to do this, there is no sheep, in inherent qualities and in general capabilities of improvement, half so good to begin with as the pure Merino;

* I think our New Zealand wool-growers may calculate on steady high prices for wool of that fine long combing sort which they are so well able to produce. We have to remember that, with the increasing meat-eating populations of Great Britain, Germany, and France, the aim of the Old World grazier must be more and more to produce fine and early mutton, even at the cost of getting a poor fleece; and I believe that, for the future, New Zealand wools will year by year become more valuable and sought after.

224

THE LINCOLNSHIRE SHEEP.

and Cotswolds and Cheviots, and Leicesters, and Downs, whether viewed as animals to be kept up as a distinct breed, or as animals to propagate some mongrel cross, are not, I fancy, likely to prove the right sheep in the right place in New Zealand.

Though, however, the improved Merino may long or ever remain "Ovine King" of New Zealand, it is not, I think, improbable that, ere long, he may have to surrender some lowland portions of his wide domain to a sheep of less regal pretensionsone whose fleece though not of the finest, is yet one of the biggest and the best. I allude to the heavy long-woolled Lincolnshire sheep, that goodly animal grazing on the rich old pastures of Holland and Kesteven, clipping a 12 lb. fleece, and weighing the tenth of a ton. Milburn gives the following correct account of my old fen friend :- "The animal appears to be of a somewhat unshapely form, taking the standard of connoisseur taste as a criterion; but when the valued wool covers him, the whole of his imperfections are hid. He is one living square of wool, ranging from fifteen to eighteen inches long; and more wool is clipped from the Lincolnshire sheep than from any English sheep whatever. The fleece varies from the enormous weight of 12 to 14 lbs., which, when it sells for 15d. or 18d. per lb., is equal to the value of the whole carcass of some of the smaller breeds of sheep. Nor are they far behind in mutton. The wether will weigh from 30 to 35 lbs. per quarter, sinking the offal, or a nett weight of mutton per sheep of 140 lbs. A wether killed at Grantham, one of an equal lot of twentyseven, clipped 17 lbs. of wool, and weighed almost 308 lbs. The sheep are always sold at two shear, and the united clipthe one made as a shearling and the other at two years old-will often average from 20 to 25 lbs. When fatted to the utmost extent, remarkable specimens are on record. A wether killed at Holbeach Marsh weighed 300 lbs. ; a ewe from Long Sutton, at the Smithfield Club Show, when killed, weighed 262 lbs. in 1846. These instances are given to show the capabilities of these largeframed sheep-not, perhaps, adapted to all localities, but remarkably productive of wool and mutton. Take, for instance, a choice specimen-assume him to be two shear, and his whole produce will be little short of a small cow.

"When greater prices prevailed, of course the produce of the animal was more; but enough has been said to show that the Lincolnshire sheep, when the least removed from its original stock, is an animal wonderfully remunerative, in the shape of wool and mutton."- Milburn on the Sheep.

The reasons why an animal yielding such a mountain of meat and wool is confined to a mere portion of one English county are twofold. In the first place, the great object of the English grazier is to produce fine and early mutton; and the Lincolnshire sheep, though the meat is well flavoured, is, nevertheless, somewhat too fat and coarse an animal to supply the butcher with those fine saddles, prime haunches, and dainty legs, which the fastidious taste of the butchers' customers now, every day, more and more require.' But there is yet another and a more potent reason why the Lincoln sheep is confined to Lincolnshire, and that is because no other county is rich enough to graze him. Showing his keep like a portly alderman, he must have the keep of a portly alderman; he is not much of a root feeder; he would rather turn up his nose at a turnip; he will trifle with mangold, and amuse himself with rape, but he is eminently a grazing sheep; and grass, rich pasture grass, rich old Lincolnshire pasture grass, is the only provender which will make him fat and happy. Transport him to the hills of Cumberland or

"Fat mutton had once a wider range of admirers than at present. The fattest animals were the best. A dish of potatoes was placed in the common oven, and over it the fat loin of a Lincoln or Leicestershire sheep. This made a great mass of gravy. The master of the house dined off the meat, while his servants fared on the delicious and saturated potatoes. But at the present time luxury has almost banished fat mutton even from the tables of the mechanic and the manufacturing operative. The Southdown and the Highland Scot, the Cheviot and the half-bred (small in joint and full of flavour, with less fat), seem to be the kind of sheep which the spread of luxury and epicurianism demands, even in the manufacturing districts of the country; and, therefore, the old tendencies of breeders to produce a big fat animal are being altogether reversed. '

226

THE LINCOLNSHIRE SHEEP.

Sussex, expect him to move about and pick up his living like vagrant Down or Cheviot, and he would become a bag of bones, a moving, yet stationary, memento of past pastures, a scandal to his race and county.

Now in New Zealand we have the very converse of those conditions which, in England, confine the Lincoln sheep to Lincolnshire. The New Zealand grazier wants wool and tallow for the export merchant-not meat, or fine meat, for the butcher; and the Lincoln sheep gives him almost double the quantity of wool which he can obtain from any other breed whatever. Nor is it wool of inferior quality. It is good long wool; and long wool is every year becoming an article more in demand by the manufacturer than short wool. Again, though my Lincolnshire friends in the Fen may smile at the notion, I venture to tell them that we have field pastures in New Zealand almost, if not quite, equal to any they can boast in Holbeach Marsh, Long Sutton, or Parson Drone,* pastures which we can multiply to a very large extent, and which, I think, would give fat content to any Lincolnshire sheep put on them. But it is not only that we have grass rich enough for this animal-we have a size of field, and a mode of farming which he loves. Like the Teeswater, the Lincolnshire sheep, in his purest state, is, for the most part, found in small flocks, grazing in small lots in small fields: a hundred or two, with a dozen Lullocks, in one field; a score or two, with a horse and a cow, in another. This is the field he would find, and the company he would keep, in New Zealand. In the little hundred-acre bush-grass farms of the north, in the small corn and grazing farms of Taranaki, Canterbury, and Otago, the paddocks are generally small, and it would be a great gain to the farmer to have two or three score, or a hundred or two, of sheep of some quiet, placid sort, which would respect his slight fences, and graze kindly with his other stock-sheep, too, which would now and then eat him off a piece of rape or mangold, and so double his corn crop; and which every year would clip him a ten-pound

*Not so rich and good in fine spring and early summer, when these pastures will carry ten sheep to the acre, but better in autumn and winter: inore equal in feed throughout the year.

THE STANDARD MERINO AND LINCOLN SHEEP.

227

fleece of a length and staple that would make Huddersfield rejoice and Bradford glad.

Whether large portions of the New Zealand wilderness be kept, ever, in their pristine state, and be grazed over, as now, on the present "squatting system;" or whether this system will, by degrees, be generally abandoned, and the Runs be converted into large grazing estates, as I have suggested in Chap. 16, is a question on which there may be some difference of opinion. But in either case, whether it be wild pasture, or grass-sown pasture, there will always be, in New Zealand, large tracts of pastoral country, of hills and plains and downs, where a light sheep, of active habits and fine fleece, like the improved Merino, must ever be the best sheep; and as population increases, and fine and early mutton becomes a desideratum, there may be large open pasture fields, and good chalky downs, and improved uplands in both islands, on which the South Down would prove a good animal. But for the rich valleys and bottom lands spread over the country from north to south, where in a few years we shall find thousands of little mixed farms, of from eighty to a couple of hundred acres, there is, I think, no sheep so worthy of our attention as the Lincolnshire sheep; and I hold it to be by no means impossible that just as we might produce on our Uplands a standard New Zealand Merino, weighing eighty pounds, and clipping a five-pound fleece of combing wool, worth 2s. a pound; so we might produce on our Lowlands a standard New Zealand Lincoln weighing 150 lbs., and clipping a ten or twelve pound fleece of combing wool, worth 18. 6d. per pound.

LAMBING AND SHEARING.-On this subject I shall quote the words of Mr. Weld, in the third edition of his pamphlet on "New Zealand Sheep Farming;"-a little publication ably conceived, well written, and the work of a most honest and practical man (a cadet, too, of one of our old English families), which should be in the hands of every emigrant who looks to producing the "golden fleece."

"The preferable time for lambing is our autumn, April being a very good month. I would commence, say on the 20th of