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.
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