THE BRODUCTION OF NEW BREEDS OF SHEEP.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 191, 17 May 1860, Page 4

THE BRODUCTION OF NEW BREEDS OF SHEEP.

There'is nothing new in the theory on this ; subject advanced by Mr. Darwin in a work lately published, under the title “On the Origin of Species by means of natural selection.” It was on the same' principle that Mr.. Bakewell and Mr. Coke proceeded 70 or 80 years ago. But the illustrations of the theory given below may be new and therefore interesting to our readers. Animals and plants transported to regions differing greatly in climatic conditions from those they previously inhabited undergo, great changes, as every naturalist knows. Thus, the longest-woolled sheep that can be sent from Leicestershire or Sussex to the West Indies have - their thick matted fleeces replaced in a year or two, by short crisp hair; and in the lambs bred in their new country this hair is so brown as to render it difficult to distinguish them from the kids of the goats with which they are often seen associated. Sometimes the acclimatising process does not modify the character of the parent, but takes effect only on the young, born and bred under its influence.

The art of the breeder consists in what Mr. Darwin calls “accumulative selection.” Nature first supplies him with a basis to work upon, in some slight casual variation observable in a single animal of the species, and he works on this basis till he has actually produced a new breed. In the year 1828, one of the ewes of the flock of merino sheep belonging to Mr. Graux, a farmer of Mauchamp, produced a male lamb which, as it grew up, became remarkable for the silky character of its wool, and for the shortness of its horns; it was of a small size, and of inferior general conformation. Desiring, however, to obtain other sheep having the same quality of wool, M. Graux determined to breed from this ram. At first he only obtained it in a single ram and a single ewe; in subsequent years he got it in a larger proportion of each progeny; and as his ailky-woolled sheep s multiplied, he was able to secure a constant succession by matching them with each other. Amongst the breed thus engendered, some .resembled the ancestral ram in its physical defects, as well as its wool; but others, while possessing the same character of wool, reverted to the more symmetrical form of the breed from which this was an offset. And Mr. Graux, by a judicious system of crossing and inter-cossing, at last established a race which not only possesses the silky wool of the first ram without the least deterioration, but is entirely free from its defects of general conformation. The wool of the new breed—known as the Mauchamp breed, is almost of priceless value as an article of commerce, since it serves for the manufacture of cashmere shawls.

Here is a fact which might form the starting point for any large sheep-breeder to make an immense fortune.