ill
Stowed much pains and attention in correcting mistakes inthe management of sheep flocks, as practised in the differentparishes of Shetland .” From his Report to the British WoolSociety, the following account of the Shetland sheep is col-lected.
In these isles, it would appear, that there are two varietiesof this breed, one of which is considered to be the native, andcarries very fine wool *, worth from 2 s. to 2 s. 6 d. per lb. in1792. By attentive management, the weight of the fleecewas raised in six years from 1 to 2, and even to 3i lbs.and at the same time improved in value. These sheep, how-ever, are rather of a delicate nature; their number is muchdiminished, and in some places entirely extinct, in conse-quence of the introduction of foreign breeds. Their wool isshort and open, and destitute of a covering of long hairs,found upon the coarse-woolled sheep, which serves to screenthem from the rain, and to preserve them from the inclemen-cy of the weather. “ It may be entitled to some experiments,”Sir John Sinclair observes, to “ know whether crossing theShetland breed with some thick fleeced, fine-woolled sheep,such as the South-Down, the Hereford, or the Spanish ,un'ght not be the means of producing a species of wool, ofvery superior value, and at the same time would not thickenthe fleece, so as to make it a better protection for the ani-mal.”
The other variety carries coarse wool above, and soft fineWool below : “ they have three different successions of woolyearly, two of which resemble long hair more than wool, andai ’e termed by the common people fors and scudda. When theWool begins to loosen in the roots, which generally happensa bout the month of February, the hairs or scudda springU P» and when the wool is carefully pulled off, the- toughhairs continue fast, until the new wool grows up about a-quarter of an inch in length, then they gradually wear off:
Culley on Live-Stock, p. 163.