Desirable Breeds Blundered
Upon By Long Series Of Groping Experiments Are Often Found To Be
Unstable And Subject To Disease - Bots, Foot Rot, Blind Staggers, Etc.
- Causing Infinite Trouble, Both Among Breeders And Manufacturers.
Would it not be well, therefore, for some one to go back as far as
possible and take a fresh start?
The source or sources whence the various breeds were derived is not
positively known, but there can be hardly any doubt of their being
descendants of the four or five wild species so generally distributed
throughout the mountainous portions of the globe, the marked
differences between the wild and domestic species being readily
accounted for by the known variability of the animal, and by the long
series of painstaking selection to which all its characteristics have
been subjected. No other animal seems to yield so submissively to the
manipulations of culture. Jacob controlled the color of his flocks
merely by causing them to stare at objects of the desired hue; and
possibly Merinos may have caught their wrinkles from the perplexed
brows of their breeders. The California species (Ovis montana)[2] is a
noble animal, weighing when full-grown some three hundred and fifty
pounds, and is well worthy the attention of wool-growers as a point
from which to make a new departure, for pure wildness is the one great
want, both of men and of sheep.
II
A Geologist's Winter Walk[3]
After reaching Turlock, I sped afoot over the stubble fields and
through miles of brown hemizonia and purple erigeron, to Hopeton,
conscious of little more than that the town was behind and beneath me,
and the mountains above and before me; on through the oaks and
chaparral of the foothills to Coulterville; and then ascended the
first great mountain step upon which grows the sugar pine.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 15 of 304
Words from 3809 to 4113
of 82482
