[43] Historical Account of New South Wales, by John Dunmore Lang, D.D., Vol. i. p. 350.
The highest prices yet obtained for some of the picked parts of the finest fleeces, are 10s. 6d. per pound. This, however, has been given only once.
The quantity of wool shipped in 1835, was 3,776,191 lbs., and was valued at £380,000 sterling.
Three acres are required on an average for the support of each sheep, but on account of the mildness of the climate, there is no necessity for providing winter food.
The range of pasture is so extensive that the sheep are liable to comparatively few diseases. The great dryness of the climate, keeps the fleece always in so comfortable a state, that they are almost never struck by the fly which, as explained at (147.), always deposits its eggs on the moistest part of the skin. Mr Cunningham once observed summer-dropt lambs with milk blotches, become fly blown, but this was in wet weather. Scab, or itch, is the most common disease, but of it I need not say any thing here. It never presents much variety, and is a disease better understood than almost any other. Ample directions for its treatment are given at (140.). It is easily checked if the job is gone about with determination. The great points are to take it in hand the moment it appears--for when it gains ground, all chances of a wool-crop are at an end for that year at least--and to use tobacco-juice most liberally, as it not only leads to the immediate death of the itch insect, but appears to have a specific effect in leading to the restoration of the wool. The balm of Columbia, which is at present so lauded for accelerating the growth of hair, is supposed, on good grounds, to be an incognito preparation of tobacco-juice. Rot is the only other important sheep-disease in the colony. It was unknown till 1827, when it broke out in a wet lying part of the Bathurst district, and succeeded, as Cunningham says, in that part of the country scourged by it, to a long fall of heavy rains, which supersaturated the blades of grass. For the method of treating this disease, fortunately rare in Australia, I must, in conclusion, refer to the body of the work.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Treatise on Sheep:, by Ambrose Blacklock