, has multiplied and even
improved. Our finest wool is obtained from Silesia, and the breed is
cultivated with more or less success in many parts of the European continent.
In England, all attempts to cultivate the merino with profit have failed.
Next to Germany in quality, and exceeding that country in quantity, we obtain
our greatest supply of fine wool from Australia, where, in the course of
twenty-five years, the merino sheep has multiplied to the extent of twelve or
thirteen million head, and is still increasing; thus doubling our supply of a
fine article, not equal to German, but, at the low price at which it can be
furnished, helping to create entirely new manufactures by intermixing with
our own coarse wools, which it renders more available and valuable. We also
obtain wool from the Cape of Good Hope, from India, from Egypt, and from
South America.

Besides pure wool, our manufacturers use large quantities of goat's hair,
called mohair, from the Mediterranean, of camel hair, of Thibet goat's hair,
of the long grey and black hair of the tame South American llama and alpaca,
and of the short soft red hair of the vicuna, a wild animal of the same
species. Indeed, almost every year since the repeal of all restrictions on
trade, has introduced some new raw material in wool or hair to our
manufacturers.

The alpaca and vicuna, now an important article of trade and manufacture,
although well known to the native Peruvians at the time of the conquest by
the Spaniards, has only come into notice within the last twenty years. The
first article of the kind that excited any attention was a dress made for Her
Majesty from a flock of llamas belonging to Her Majesty, under the
superintendence of Mr. Thomas Southey, the eminent wool broker.

The stock from the small flock of merinos taken out by Colonel Macarthur to
what was then only known as Botany Bay, now supports 300,000 souls in
prosperity in Australia, and supplies exports to the amount of upwards of a
million and a half sterling per annum.

The Great Exhibition afforded an excellent display of the variety and
progress of Yorkshire woollen manufactures, proving the immense advantage
they derived from choice and mixture of various qualities and materials. In
several examples the body was of stout English wool, with a face of finest
Australia,--in some cases, of mohair,--and, in one instance, a most beautiful
article was produced by putting a face of vicuna on British