THE FIRST CROSSBREDS.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 93, 17 October 1908, Page 3

THE FIRST CROSSBREDS.

The question has been disked by the Sydney Mail's Bradford, wool correspondent : Who first of all coupled an English mutton sire with a Merino ewe, arid who laid the foundation of the Australian crossbred trade in wool? He says that the great colonial 'crossbred trade was unborn in the seventies, and not till the eighties were well passed did the New Zealand .crossbred, wools begin to appear. The writer recollects reading in an old Sydney Gazette that a little over a, century ago a number of English" mutton sheep were landed in Botany Bay. They coneisted of Leicesters, Cotswolds, Lincolns, and other breeds not named. For some time they were kept intact, but with the advent of the Merino some settlers obtained one or more fine-woo'lled rams, and mated these with ooarse-woolled ewes. How far they have persevered with 'them is not recorded, but there is evidence that several men who went from Sydney to New Zealand when, that colony was being populated by white people took a number of coarse-woolled sheep with them.. This would be a little over 80 years ' ago. When the Merino became more plentiful in this State tho veoarser wools Avere. evidently given up. It was the Australian Agricultural Company which brought out the first consignment of British sheep of note, whilst in Victoria there were several flocks of British sheep

in the fifties. Tho earliest importation into New Zealand direct from England was in 1857, when one lot of Romney Marsh and one lot of Cheviots ww landed at Port Chalmers. As there was then a large 'number of Merino flocks in Now Zealand, many were found unsuitable for -.tho rich country, and the likelihood is that the Merino ewes were mated with" English rams. So.tliat New Zealand, crossbreeding may bo said to be about half a century old. •