Azure Skies And Crystal Waters Find Loving Recognition, And Few There
Be Who Would Welcome The Axe Among Mountain Pines, Or Would Care To
Apply Any Correction To The Tones And Costumes Of Mountain Waterfalls.
Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained
by civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature
something essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human
culture.
I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool
growing upon mountain sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta was
much finer than the average grades of cultivated wool. This FINE
discovery was made some three months ago[1], while hunting among the
Shasta sheep between Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three fleeces
were obtained - one that belonged to a large ram about four years old,
another to a ewe about the same age, and another to a yearling lamb.
After parting their beautiful wool on the side and many places along
the back, shoulders, and hips, and examining it closely with my lens,
I shouted: "Well done for wildness! Wild wool is finer than tame!"
My companions stooped down and examined the fleeces for themselves,
pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning them between their fingers,
and measuring the length of the staple, each in turn paying tribute to
wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish Merino.
Wild wool IS finer than tame.
"Here," said I, "is an argument for fine wildness that needs no
explanation. Not that such arguments are by any means rare, for all
wildness is finer than tameness, but because fine wool is appreciable
by everybody alike - from the most speculative president of national
wool-growers' associations all the way down to the gude-wife spinning
by her ingleside."
Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many
bairns - birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining
jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the
sun warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the
snowy northland she takes care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has
socks and mittens, and a tail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse
is densely feathered down to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep,
besides his undergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair
that sheds off both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and
adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than
to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same
consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature.
Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests,
underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible
combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is
preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be,
she never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, living always
in the dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roaming through
bushes, and leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so
exquisitely adapted to its mountain life that it is always found as
unruffled and stainless as a bird.
On leaving the Shasta hunting grounds I selected a few specimen tufts,
and brought them away with a view to making more leisurely
examinations; but, owing to the imperfectness of the instruments at my
command, the results thus far obtained must be regarded only as rough
approximations.
As already stated, the clothing of our wild sheep is composed of fine
wool and coarse hair. The hairs are from about two to four inches
long, mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, though varying somewhat with
the seasons. In general characteristics they are closely related to
the hairs of the deer and antelope, being light, spongy, and elastic,
with a highly polished surface, and though somewhat ridged and
spiraled, like wool, they do not manifest the slightest tendency to
felt or become taggy. A hair two and a half inches long, which is
perhaps near the average length, will stretch about one fourth of an
inch before breaking. The diameter decreases rapidly both at the top
and bottom, but is maintained throughout the greater portion of the
length with a fair degree of regularity. The slender tapering point
in which the hairs terminate is nearly black: but, owing to its
fineness as compared with the main trunk, the quantity of blackness is
not sufficient to affect greatly the general color. The number of
hairs growing upon a square inch is about ten thousand; the number of
wool fibers is about twenty-five thousand, or two and a half times
that of the hairs. The wool fibers are white and glossy, and
beautifully spired into ringlets. The average length of the staple is
about an inch and a half. A fiber of this length, when growing
undisturbed down among the hairs, measures about an inch; hence the
degree of curliness may easily be inferred. I regret exceedingly that
my instruments do not enable me to measure the diameter of the fibers,
in order that their degrees of fineness might be definitely compared
with each other and with the finest of the domestic breeds; but that
the three wild fleeces under consideration are considerably finer than
the average grades of Merino shipped from San Francisco is, I think,
unquestionable.
When the fleece is parted and looked into with a good lens, the skin
appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, and the delicate wool fibers
are seen growing up among the strong hairs, like grass among stalks of
corn, every individual fiber being protected about as specially and
effectively as if inclosed in a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine
to stand by itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisible as
the floating threads of spiders, while the hairs against which they
lean stand erect like hazel wands; but, notwithstanding their great
dissimilarity in size and appearance, the wool and hair are forms of
the same thing, modified in just that way and to just that degree that
renders them most perfectly subservient to the well-being of the
sheep.
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