It makes it more difficult to draft them out of a strange flock, and much harder to tell when any are missing.
Concerning this resemblance between sheep, there is a story told of a fat old Murrumbidgee squatter who gave a big price for a famous ram called Sir Oliver. He took a friend out one day to inspect Sir Oliver, and overhauled that animal with a most impressive air of sheep-wisdom.
"Look here," he said, "at the fineness of the wool. See the serrations in each thread of it. See the density of it. Look at the way his legs and belly are clothed -- he's wool all over, that sheep.
Grand animal, grand animal!"
Then they went and had a drink, and the old squatter said, "Now, I'll show you the difference between a champion ram and a second-rater."
So he caught a ram and pointed out his defects. "See here -- not half the serrations that other sheep had. No density of fleece to speak of.
Bare-bellied as a pig, compared with Sir Oliver. Not that this isn't a fair sheep, but he'd be dear at one-tenth Sir Oliver's price.
By the way, Johnson" (to his overseer), "what ram IS this?"
"That, sir," replied the astounded functionary -- "that IS Sir Oliver, sir!"
There is another kind of sheep in Australia, as great a curse in his own way as the merino -- namely, the cross-bred, or half-merino-half-Leicester animal. The cross-bred will get through, under, or over any fence you like to put in front of him.
He is never satisfied with his owner's run, but always thinks other people's runs must be better, so he sets off to explore.
He will strike a course, say, south-east, and so long as the fit takes him he will keep going south-east through all obstacles -- rivers, fences, growing crops, anything. The merino relies on passive resistance for his success; the cross-bred carries the war into the enemy's camp, and becomes a living curse to his owner day and night.
Once there was a man who was induced in a weak moment to buy twenty cross-bred rams. From that hour the hand of Fate was upon him.
They got into all the paddocks they shouldn't have been in.
They scattered themselves over the run promiscuously.
They visited the cultivation paddock and the vegetable-garden at their own sweet will. And then they took to roving. In a body they visited the neighbouring stations, and played havoc with the sheep all over the district.
The wretched owner was constantly getting fiery letters from his neighbours: "Your blanky rams are here. Come and take them away at once," and he would have to go nine or ten miles to drive them home.
Any man who has tried to drive rams on a hot day knows what purgatory is.
He was threatened every week with actions for trespass.
He tried shutting them up in the sheep-yard. They got out and went back to the garden. Then he gaoled them in the calf-pen.
Out again and into a growing crop. Then he set a boy to watch them; but the boy went to sleep, and they were four miles away across country before he got on to their tracks.
At length, when they happened accidentally to be at home on their owner's run, there came a big flood. His sheep, mostly merinos, had plenty of time to get on to high ground and save their lives; but, of course, they didn't, and were almost all drowned. The owner sat on a rise above the waste of waters and watched the dead animals go by.
He was a ruined man. But he said, "Thank God, those cross-bred rams are drowned, anyhow." Just as he spoke there was a splashing in the water, and the twenty rams solemnly swam ashore and ranged themselves in front of him. They were the only survivors of his twenty thousand sheep.
He broke down, and was taken to an asylum for insane paupers.
The cross-breds had fulfilled their destiny.
The cross-bred drives his owner out of his mind, but the merino ruins his man with greater celerity. Nothing on earth will kill cross-breds; nothing will keep merinos alive.
If they are put on dry salt-bush country they die of drought.
If they are put on damp, well-watered country they die of worms, fluke, and foot-rot. They die in the wet seasons and they die in the dry ones.
The hard, resentful look on the faces of all bushmen comes from a long course of dealing with merino sheep. The merino dominates the bush, and gives to Australian literature its melancholy tinge, its despairing pathos. The poems about dying boundary-riders, and lonely graves under mournful she-oaks, are the direct outcome of the poet's too close association with that soul-destroying animal.
A man who could write anything cheerful after a day in the drafting-yards would be a freak of nature.
