Transcription

108
NEW SOUTH WALES WOOL
 

ON THE GROWING OF WOOL AND ITS EFFECT UPON THE SOIL

FROM JOHNSTONES AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY

The rearing of wool affords another beautiful illustration, both of the kind of food which animals require for particular purposes and of the effect which a peculiar husbandry must slowly produce upon the soil.
Wool and hair are distinguished from the fleshy parts of the animal by the large proportion of sulphur they contain, Perfectly clean & dry wool Contains about 5 per cent of  sulphur - or every hundred pounds contain five per cent.
The quantity as well as the quality of the wool yielded by a single sheep varies much with the breed, the Climate, the constitution, the food, & consequently with the soil, on which the food is grown. The Hereford Sheep, which are kept lean & give the finest wool, yield only one & a half pounds: but a Merino often gives a fleece weighing ten pounds & eleven pounds and sometimes as much as twelve pounds.
 

NUMBER OF SHEEP IN GREAT BRITAIN
 

The number of Sheep in Great Britain & Ireland amounts to Thirty Millions, and their yield of wool to one hundred & eleven millions of pounds or about four pounds to the fleece, This quantity of wool Contains five millions of pounds of sulphur, which is of Coarse all extracted from the soil.
If we suppose this sulphur to exist in, & to be extracted from the soil in the form of gypsum then the plants which the sheep live upon must take out from the soil to produce the wool alone thirty millions of pounds or thirteen thousand tons of gypsum.
Any one sheep farm in a year is Comparatively small  - yet it is reasonable to believe that, by the long growth of wool on hilly land, to which nothing is ever added, either by art or from natural sources, the grass must gradually cease to grow in which sulphur most largely abounds, & which favour, therefore, the growth of wool - In other words, the produce of wool is likely to diminish, by lapse of time, where it has for Centuries been yearly Carried off the land and again, the produce is likely to be increased in amount when such land is dressed with gypsum and other manure in which sulphur naturally exists.

 

 

 

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