COLONIAL SHEEP AND WOOLS. [From the Globe, Dec. 1.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 708, 15 May 1852, Page 4

COLONIAL SHEEP AND WOOLS. [From the Globe, Dec. I.]

• In another part of to-day's impression will be found a notice of a work of some merit on the wool manufactured in the United Kingdom, and the sources whence it is obtained. ' (3ur colonies in Australia have for some year* past taken so prominent a place among those who supply us with wool from abroad, that anything likely to affect the continuance of the supply from that quarter in particular merits serious attention ; and there is reasonable ground for apprehending that an exchange from sbeep-tending to gold-dig-ging being open to every shepherd in Australia, the flocks may be deserted and the next year's crop of wool fall short. Already the home market has been agitated, though not lo any material extent, by speculations founded on this hypothesis ; and the news from these colonies is now scanned in England, with quite as much avidity I to discover whether the sheep are attended to, and the wool safe, as to learn how much gold has been raised. So far as we are yet iuformed^ however, the apprehended transfer of labour would appear to have been but small. It has ' also been urged, with gome effect, that though Australia does send us about 60 per cent of all the wool we import, we have reason to anticipate that any reduction of the supply thence during the next twelve months' will coincide with a like reduction, on the other tund^ of the usual demand for British wool and woollen goods on the Continent — seeing that food there is comparatively dear this season, and dealers expecting revolutionary disturbances, will probably keep their stocks as low as possible. But to us it appears that this mode of treating the subject is much too narrow. Granting that our colonial supply is in danger, the possible disturbance must be measured by the relative magnitude of that supply, as compared with the whole. How large a proportion of the wool annually passing through our factories is raised at home we have no very precise means of ascertaining. It is estimated, in the work above referred to, and apparently with much care, at 275,000,000 pounds. The whole quantity imported is about 75,000,000 pounds ; and we export in a raw state about 17,000,000 pounds. The net supply from without, then, cannot be taken at more, on an average, than 60,000,000 pounds. The total quantity worked up being somewhere about 335,000,000 pounds, it follows that a reductiou of 25 per cent, on the whole external supply, or, in other words, a failure of the Australian quota to the extent of one-half, would not affect the aggregate supply of the year by so much as five per cent. It is true that the Australian supply has for some years been a rapidly increasing one ; but so far as general indications gathered from a wide field of observation, may be compared with data so precise as those furnished by the Custom House entries, it is equally certain that the quantity of wool raised at home has also been rapidly increasing of late. For a good many years during the first half of the present century the enclosure of open pastures, and the breaking up of enclosed grass land, probably tended to reduce the number of sheep kept. But since competition has spurred our farmers to new exertions — since they have taken science to their aid, and agriculture has assumed, at least partially, the active and inquiring aspect common to most other branches of British industry — we have heard much more of profitable modes of sheep-feeding than the primitive one of unlimited grazing. The'breeding of sheep is now, in several large districts of England — as in Dorset and in Hereford — made directly subservient to the growing of corn, either by feeding the sheep on grass-land during the day, and folding them on the arable at night, or | by sowing, alternately with corn, crops to be [ eaten ofF by folded sheep. In short, the growth of mutton and wool has recently become through whole counties, " a recognized branch of the best and most prevalent method of farming." Hence, we are not without strong reasons for believing that, whatever may happen to the one- fifth of our annual supply of wool obtained from abroad, the other four-fifths, raised at home, is likely (in the absence of extraordinary casualties, not now in contemplation) to preserve this ancient and valuable section of our trade from the distress that must needs follow any considerable failure in the usual supply of the raw material.

On the Rise, Progress, and Present State of Colonial Sheep and Wools, continued from 1846, and comprising those of Australia, ! Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, South Africa, China, &c. By Thomas Southey. Bvo. pp. 93. Effingham Wilson; ] ! In 1846, Mr. Soutbey published an elaborate I and interesting volume on the sources, quantity, and quality of the wools then And previously in use in the manufactories of this country. One j ■ of the most remarkable facts he placed before his readers was the change, which a> few/yetrs — very few in comparison with the woollen manufacture in England — had effected in the quantity of wool imported, and also in the proportions of this quantity derived from different places, especially from our own colonies, as compared with foreign countries. A lapse of five years has rendered the change still more striking. There is good reason for supposing, though we have unfortunately no means of verifying a conjecture of so much importance with any degree of exactness, that the quantity of wool grown in the United Kingdom, and sheared for manufacture, has been gradually and slowly increasing since the beginning of the present century. Keeping this in view, it is interesting, even to those who bestow but a passing glance upon the subject, to know that while the quantity we imported annually at the close of the war (1815) was less than fourteen millions of pounds, it had risen in 1849 to, and now averages, year by year, considerably more than five times that amount. Thirty-five years ago, too, nearly every pound of the wool we Imported was grown within the limits of Europe, and more than half of it came from Spain alone. -Now the Spanish . supply has almost .ceased, and though the rest of Europe has increased its supply till the aggregate exceeds twice the European supply of 1815, it. does not altogether form onethird of what we import. Nearly half of all we import now comes from Australia. In other words, that group of colonies alone vow sends us

about three times as much wool as we obtained from the whole continent of Europe fn 1815 — though, as we have said, the continent then supplied us with nearly all we did not ourselves grow. From the Cape colony we get more than five millions of pounds, and from British India more than four millions of pounds annually. Out of Europe we have no foreign supplies of importance, except from South America, whence we receive some six millions of pounds a year. Before we can pass from these figures to an estimate of the whole Increase, between 1815 and 1849, in the quantity worked up in tliis country, we have to add the quantity raised at home at the beginning and at the end of the period, and to deduct the exports, Taking the data collected by Mr. Southey — and they appear to be the best yet made available — we may iet down the, number of sheep now in the United Kingdom at 55 millions. Of this number he supposes that 15 millions are annually killed ; and the rest clipped — yielding, at an average of 5 pounds each, a total of 275,000,000 pounds of woo). Adding 77,000,000 pounds imported, and then deducting 16,500,000 pounds exported — about one- fourth of it of home production — we have remaining the enormous quantity ' of 335,000,000 pounds a year as the quantity partly consumed in this country and partly exported in a manufactured state.'.- , . ' '' Here we are presented with the two remarkable facts ;—(1.); — (1.) That large as is the quantity we import, it forms only about one-fifth of what passes through our factories — the other four-fifths being raised on our own soil ; and (2) that we work up about half as much wool, by weight, as we do of cotton — the whole of the latter being imported. In view of such facts as these, the -woollen manufacture of Britain can hardly acquire additional interest from the recollection that though now, in point of commercial value, the second branch of our export trade, it was (or some centuties the first — that Manchester and the numerous towns in the same district, now so entirely engrossed by the spinning and weaving of cotton, came into existence as centres of the woollen manufacture — or that the manipulation of wool was, during the middle ages, the best known, the most characteristic, the most widely diffused,. and, as a natural result, the most prized of British occupations. The factories devoted to the manufacture of woollen and worsted goods in the United Kingdom, at present, are upwards of 1800 in number, employing, immediately, about 150,000 persons; and as collectors and sorters of the raw material, as carriers, before and after manufacture, as providers and repairers of buildings, engines, &c, and as salesmen, dealers, exporters, tailors, &c, a much larger number. It is also worthy of notice, that with the extension of the trade its character has been elevated in a scientific point of view. The breeding of sheep has, in this country, always had the double object of providing meat for the butcher and wool for the spinner. The home demand for mutton quite keeps pace with the home demand for wool, aud to some extent must interfere with and control it. To reconcile the two demands, or rather to find the line of greatest profit in satisfying both, bas called forth and exercised a good deal of ingenuity, and has led' to a careful study of all the facts known to bear upon the breeding and growth of sheep. fi&ilf a century ago we imported only about nine or ten millions of pounds of wool annually ; and the only apparent method of obtaining to any great extent, a variety of quality not afforded* by cur own flocks, was that of varying the breeds we possessed by introducing foreign sheep. This was done to some extent under the patronage of George 111., who held to the rigid " protection '* of the British wool trade, so long previously maintained, with all the tenacity he displayed iti keeping Roman Catholics out of Parliament. But it was the Elector, afterwards King of Saxony, who carried this idea into practice with most success. Favoured by climate, be showed that the Merino throve better in Germany, than, in Spain. Hence the decline of Spain in. the list of countries sending us wool ; and the improved position of Germany in this reape.ct. And we now, in the vast extent of our supply, home, colonial, and foreign, find a vaiiety of quality — especially an abundance of the finer and ; more highly cultivated qualities — even mote remarkable than the increase of quantity. Thewool department in the Great Exhibition astonished many of its visitors by the close approximation ot this substance sometimes totsilk and sometimes to cotton in appearance, white retaining all the distinctive qualities in which it ranks above these rival substances. And as recent improvements in machinery have brought flax and cotton more nearly into the same class of raw material, so like improvements (with some chemical aid) have led the mingling of hemp with wool, so as to produce a fabric for some purposes belter: than could be made from tilher separately. > The woo) sett from Australia appears t» have been steadily rising in the estimation of the home manufacturer for some years past ; and it '» now much sought for use on the Continent. .This effect may be traced to additional care in breed* ing and feeding the sheep, and' in shearing, assorting, and packing the wool ; and* it is encouraging the Australians to new. exertions* Subscriptions have recently been made to introduce the alpaca from Peru. Wheny some years, ago, a similar attempt was made by a few Englishfarmers, they were met by a flat refusal, on the part of the native Government, to permit theexportation of the living animal: Perhaps, astimes have changed, our colonists raay.be moresuccessful. ' Mr. Soutbey's book — completed to a very recent date by the supplementary volume- now before vs — may be said to have no riva&in'its class. Some defects of arrangement, and the occasional, though not frequent introduction of matter to be spared without detriment to ibework, might be- regarded as serious faults if the same copious information could, be obtained elsewhere. As it is, .they seem hardly, otherwise tbanproper to the yet imperfect and rapidly-growjngr coudition of the British trade in wool and woollengoods, and .willi probably pass unnoticed, by its mercantile teadeti^ • ,• ,