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Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 19, 30 July 1889, Page 2

The following extract from Quibell's Sheep Breeders Guide for 1838 will be interesting to many of our farmers who are breeding sheep. Mr Allan, a breeder of merino sheep in N.S.W., noticed the purer the flock were the more often black sheep appeared among them, notwithstanding that every sheep having any colored spots about it was rigidly excluded from the stud flocks. It occurred to him, the strain proving so strong and apparently impossible to obliterate, that probably the original merino had been principally black, and by continuous culling for centuries had been brought to the prevailing color. He determined therefore to try if, by putting black Bires to black ewes, these would produce in any quantity the like color. He found that in every case it succeeded and no white lambs resulted. A small white spot on the forehead, and small white tip to the tail, is almost universal. In picking sheep for the colored flock Mr Allan makes it a sine qua non that the tongue and the roof of the mouth are black. These sheep appear hardier and mo/c active than the white merino, and although they are not so prime they do not sufter so much in drought or bad seasons. The wool keeps up its character for quality and quantity, and at the sales in London in 1885 brought Is 6£d per lb, in grease — double the average of the white wool. The cloth manufactured from this wool is of a fine dark coffee color. Braeside, where this flock runs, is a granite and slate country 2800 feet above sea level, about 100 miles from the coast, on the western waters of one of the heads of the Murray river. As the Post thinks Mr George Fisher will not be able to secure a seat in the House for a Wellington constituency at the next general election, that variable journal is trying to " place " Mr Fisher with a country electorate. It will " take him some trouble to do it." As there is some probability of a dissolution of Parliament we would urge upon those who have not yet had their names placed on the Electoral Roll to do so at once. There is no time to be lost.