GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. fibre. This, and perhaps the great development of fleece and weight, are to be attributed less to skill and the character of our soil and climate than to the prevailing system of keeping and the careful and thrifty habits of the people. The flocks, being generally small, are under the personal care of the proprietors. They are housed in winter and regularly and abundantly fed, and consequently produce a healthy and sound fibre. Thus our wools owe their best-distin guishing attribute indirectly to social or moral causes. It would be seen that our Merino wools, as a rule, belong to the class of inter mediary wools produced in Europe by the Negretti race, now generally prevalent in most Merino wool-producing countries and increasing in others. Many of our manufacturers complain of the falling off of our fine wool production. The American wool-grower has seen little at the Exhibition to induce him to change his pres ent system. He has found that the cloth-industry of the world is adapting itself to the intermediary wools such as he produces. Even fashion yields to economical necessities. The superfine wool- production is unnatural, artificial, and unprofitable. From the nature of things there can be no reasonable expectation of seeing it revived in this country. So small is the consumption of the superfine wools that what might be imported from abroad would hardly compete with American wools; and if it were possible to distinguish them so that there should be no possibility of fraud or evasion, they might without injury to the wool-grower be placed on the same scale of duties as carpet-wools, neither being advantageously produced here. The reader would naturally look for particulars as to the distribution of sheep in the several States of our territory, with observations as to the characteristics of the wool in the different States as influenced by soil and climate. These particulars the writer hoped to supply, and with this view addressed letters of inquiry to each of the Commis sioners from the wool-growing States. The information obtained was so meagre that he has been compelled to abandon his purpose. The wools of many of our States have characteristic qualities readily recognized by inspection or touch; but the most skilled expert would be unable to define, in language intelligible to the unskilled, differences which to him are perfectly palpable. The deficiency as to the distribution of sheep in the several States, is approximately supplied by a statement which accompanied an admirable exhibit of samples of wools from most of the States and Territories of the Union, made by Messrs. Fiss, Banes, & Erben, of Philadelphia. This exhibit, made at the special request of the Super intendent of the Agricultural Department of the Exhibition, was