NEW SHEEP-SHEARING INSTRUMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1243, 25 September 1875, Page 18

NEW SHEEP-SHEARING INSTRUMENT.

The Hon. J. P. Bell recently imported a new instrument in shearing sheep. The Courier gives the result of a trial made of it, in presence of the Chief Inspector of Sheep and others, upon some large Lincoln sheep, the property of Mr Bell, in <he quarantine shed, South Brisbane. Tho iiititruinflnt is in appearance Eome« thing like the horae-clipper } but, unlike that instrument, it has only one move* able blade, acting on eight or ten stationary blades, and i<he action is not that of a scissors, but like the common sheepshears. The fixed blades are so arranged that they have an elastic action on the movenble blade, and each blade is pointed something after the manuer of a common razorgunrd, so that in would be almost impossible for even the greatest novice to cut the ekins of the sheep. The sheep shorn with tho instrument yesterday were better •»d more cicely shorn than if they h*4

been operated upon by the greatest expert in any of the large Downs sheds, and this, too, in face of the fact that the man who was using the instrument, — the quarantine keeper — we were assured, had never shorn a sheep in his lifetime until last year, when he sheared forty sheep in quarantine.