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2 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 187b. GROUP IX. WOOL AND SILK FABRICS. CLASS 667.—Wool in the Fleece, in Bales, and Carded. Leading all nations in the supply of this material, the group of British colonies in the Southern Hemisphere, known as Australia, makes itself most conspicuous. The colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia, and New Zealand, although separate political organizations, exhibit so marked a nationality in this common production, that we are compelled to consider them as one. Foreign Judges, who were familiar with the great European Expo sitions, concur in pronouncing the exhibition of wools by Australia at the International Exhibition of 1876 as surpassing any ever before made. The colonies vied with one another in making their exhibits upon a scale proportionate to their vast power of production. Thus the wools of each exhibitor were shown in bales, in numerous fleeces, and illustrative samples, as produced from ewes, rams, hoggets, and lambs, as unwashed, cold-washed, and hot-water-washed, and as adapted for combing or for clothing purposes. Of course, the char acteristic feature of the display was the capacity of Australia for the culture of wool of the Merino breed, adapted to the present exigencies of the manufacturing nations, for the exhibition of wool of other breeds by Australia was comparatively unimportant. The fibre of this breed was shown here in the utmost perfection, both in staple and condition, for all ordinary purposes of manufacture, with a production already of great proportions, yet constantly enlarging. When we consider the wide adaptation of this fibre to the uses both of luxury and necessity, and remember that it was for centuries the monopoly of a single nation, refused even to its colonies; that when Spain relaxed her monopoly, scarcely over a century ago, it was only in favor of the kings of Europe; and that the Merinos procured from Spain by George III., in 1792, in exchange for eight carriage-horses,