What the World Owes to Sheep

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 12332, 22 April 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

What the World Owes to Sheep

If t he horse is the friend of man. .ijoep is our provider, says Max"plunden in the “Sunday Chron-

it or not, we are indebted

. -tieeo f°r!Tt rustlessness of our razor-

'of the British Em-

‘s, f efficiency of our tcmiis, M .h or badminton rackets; peeping our rates and taxes

’pie quick-healing of our opera-

tjougfe, lipstick, face-creams and

..tjer cosmetics. ' Le t's look at the sheep in the varstages of its life, llive. it saves parks, golf courses gd public commons thousands of •rands a year in grass-mowing costs. %heep give the World 1,750,000 of wool a year. Imagine this •mount of wool heaped in piles the dies of the average haystack, which Idghs 20 tons. It would make ;;,500 of those. Wool runs like a skein through history of the British Empire, -he influence of the sheep crops up repeatedly. Woollen manufacture *is already a commerce in Britain ihen Julius Caesar arrived. And it soon became such a rich source of English wealth that at least three aonarchs have passed special laws to protect it. Charles 11 even went so far as to levy a tax on all corpses not buried in woollens.

Some 300 years before him, Edward 111 showed the Lord Chancellor where he expected the money to come from for his expeditions to France by making the Chancellor’s official seat in the House of Lords a large sack of wool. The Woolsack is still the Lord Chancellor’s official seat in the House. But it was not until 1774 that Robert Bakewell, hardy Liecestershire yeoman, put sheep-breeding in England on a scientific basis. He made stock-breeding an expert study lor the first time; provided better meat for England’s then fast-grow-ing millions, better wool for England’s busy mills.

Then things began to. happen In England’s new colony, Australia. Her growth and prosperity can 'be traced directly to one man’s pioneering spirit—and sheep.

In 1794 Johp MacArthur, who had accompanied the first consignment of emigrants, was given a commission and 200 acres of land as an inducement to settle there.

He began to experiment at breeding from a handful of sheep on the slopes around Sydney harbour. , Necessity forced him to explore and discover much of Australia’s richest grazing lands.

To-day, Australia’s 114,000,000 sheep give her one-quarter of the world’s wool production, and are her chief source of income. But the most interesting thing about the sheep is the that has to be washed from its wool before the fleece can be used. For centuries “wool-dirt” was a waste product. It filled the Bradford sewers, and in wooleombing

countries, where water was scarce the need to wash wool was a curse.

Tfien in 1890 an English chemist experimented with wool grease and read a paper on his findings to the Society of the Chemical Industry.

First it was found that woolSrease in its refined state—lanolin is the nearest to human fat ever kaown. It will take a tincture into tie bloodstream within a few min-

SCIENCE FINDS MANY USES

utes of being put on the skin. In a few years the enormous cosmetic industry sprang up, with its millions of pounds turnover and an insatiable demand for skin-benefit-ing chemicals. Just after the last war, British industry became alarmed at the increasing amount of dermatitis and similar skin troubles suffered/ by workers each year. The Home Office was asked to investigate. After considerable research. a committee found that lanolin would put back into the human skin the natural fats taken out by the mineral oils, spirits, and acids used in industrial processes. To-day -thousands of employees in factories and works are provided with drums of this refined sheep’s grease for use before and after work. But the help the humble sheep’s grease has given pharmaceutics is nothing compared with the way it has come to the rescue of the metal industries. The greatest curse of the metal age has been. . . rust. Thousands of pounds’ worth of stocks can be ruined in a night if damp hits a warehouse of uncoated metal goods. Kust can destroy whole shiploads of machinery, tools, nuts, and bolts, razor-blades, or engine-parts going to tropical climates. Scientists have found that wool grease, refined to the stage of lanolin, has unique metal-protective qualities. Thousands of gallons of lanolin rust preventives are used to protect metal goods during export and between manufacturing process-

Uses for sheep’s grease in its various stages of refinement are still being found. In its cruder state it is used as a lubricant, and in the manufacture of soap and candles. Its waterproofing qualities (ever noticed how rain runs off sheep’s wool?) have led paint manufacturers to investigate its uses in their trade. So much, for the sheep alive. Dead, it becomes one of the world’s most important foods. New Zealand is the biggest exporter of mutton and lamb, and we in the United Kingdom take 95 per cent of the world’s total exports, and are the third largest producers. The British Empire, in fact, is the mutton and lamb business, for it furnishes about SI per cent of the world’s supplies.

Then there are the inedible parts of the sheep, the sausage, trade, for instance, depends on the sheep’s Intestines for its skins. “Cat-

gut” is made from sheep’s intestines, too, and is a large industry founded on just this one small part of the sheep. It is used for surgical purposes and racket and musical strings.

At the London Hospital’s ligature department in Whitechapel,* 2500 lambs’ intestines are converted every week into stitches for sewing operation wounds.

Sheep’s hooves are usually sent to the chemical department at Woolwich Arsenal and boiled down to help make nitro-glycerine and other explosives. • ’ :