SHASTA HEAD OF THE MERINO RAM HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP

These eleven, embracing the Shetland or Orkney; the Dun-woolled; Black-faced, or heath-bred; the Moorland, or Devonshire; the Cheviot; the Horned, of Norfolk the Ryeland; South-Down; the Merino; the Old Leicester, and the Teeswater, or New Leicester, have of late years been epitomized; and, for all useful and practical purposes, reduced to the following four orders: 686.

Of European wools, the finest is that yielded by the Merino sheep, the Spanish and Saxon breeds taking the precedence.

The Merino sheep, as now naturalized in Australia, furnishes an excellent fleece; but all varieties of sheep-wool, reared either in Europe or Australia are inferior in softness of feel to that grown in India, and to that of the llama of the Andes.

The best of our British wools are inferior in fineness to any of the above-mentioned, being nearly twelve times the thickness of the finest Spanish merino; but for the ordinary purposes of the manufacturer, they are unrivalled.

Silk dresses should never be brushed, but rubbed with a piece of merino, or other soft material, of a similar colour, kept for the purpose.

All the red cloaks had long since been laid aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk.

" After a long, absent-minded look over the meadows towards the sea, where the waves were darkening in the twilight, he arose in haste, threw off his wrapper, a gray merino affair, trimmed with quilted crimson silk, that Prudence had given him on a birthday three years ago, and went to the wash-stand to bathe his face and brush back that mass of black hair.

It is much softer and less irritating than flannel or merino, and is very useful for summer wear.

Her morning wrapper of fine crimson merino, embroidered with gold-colored silk, was singularly becoming to her complexion, softened as the contact was by a white lace collar fastened at the throat with a golden pin.

"How gracefully the glossy folds of Mamita's gray dress fall over Rosa's crimson merino.

The spirit of laughter still flitted over her face, from eyes to dimples; her shining black curls were lighted up with a rope of cherry-colored chenille, hanging in a tassel at her ear; and her graceful little figure showed to advantage in a neatly fitting dress of soft brown merino, embroidered with cherry-colored silk.

The Governor's proclamation had been duly and truly read from the pulpit the Sunday before, to the great consternation of Miss Briskett, the ambulatory dressmaker, who declared confidentially to Deacon Pitkin's wife that "she didn't see nothin' how she was goin' to get through thingsand there was Saphiry's gown, and Miss Deacon Trowbridge's cloak, and Lizy Jane's new merino, not a stroke done on't.

Now comes the thickly-wadded winter pelisse of silk or merino, with bands or ligatures, which instantly bury themselves in the depths of the surrounding hillocks, till within the case of clothes before you, which stands like a roll-pudding tied up ready for the boiler, no one would suspect the slender skipping sprite that your little finger can lift.

The only difference with the men is that, instead of a coat, they frequently wear the Poncho, which is composed of two pieces of cloth or merino, each about one ell broad and two ells long.

I met one yesterday, whose green eyes, great nose, thick lips, and sallow wrinkles, under a bonnet of fifteen years' standing, further clothed upon by a scant merino cloak and cat-skin tippet, would have cut a sorry figure in the gallery of the Vatican or the Louvre, and put the tranquil Madonna of San Sisto into a state of stunning antithesis; but if Saint Agnes or Saint Catharine was half as good as my saint, I am glad of it!

In modern times, the sheep of Spain have been introduced into France and Germany, and from them have sprung the French merino and Saxony varieties.

Above yon town of Christchurch stretch the Merino Hills.

On them graze sheep by the thousandand it is from those sheep that the true Merino wool comes.

Having always found friends enough ready to supply her with money, whenever she wished to establish a temporary hospital, it had never occurred to her that she should need any for private use, beyond just enough to furnish the simple blue merino dress of the sisterhood, which had often been provided for her by the Kaiserswerth Institute.

Mrs. Tadman stood a little way behind him, in a merino gown, and a new bonnet, extorted somehow from the reluctant Stephen.

She dwelt dolefully upon the merits of each particular article, most especially upon a French-merino dress she had bought for Stephen's wedding, which would have lasted her a lifetime, and a Paisley shawl, the gift of her deceased husband, which had been in her possession twenty years, and had not so much as a thin place in it.

Strabo says that the wool of Turdetania in Spain was so celebrated in the generation after Varro that a ram of the breed (the ancestors of the modern Merino) fetched a talent, say $1,200; a price which may be compared with that of the prize ram recently sold in England for export to the Argentine for as much as a thousand pounds sterling, and considered a good commercial investment at that.

Her ruby-colored merino dress absorbed the light; she was a mass of deep red, except her face and hair, above which her silver crescent comb shone.

Under the protection of our orchard wall I turned my merino mantle, which was lined with an indefinite color, spread my veil over my bonnet, and bent my shoulders, and passed down the carriage-drive, by the dining-room windows, into the stable-yard.