Not the sort of man to venture upon a new venture carelessly was Jason, and he had a problem before him now: What sort of sheep should he raise? His cattle and hogs were of good breeds and to have seen to it that it was so he had found profitable. With sheep he was less acquainted. He asked advice. "Get Merinos, by all means," pronounced Henry Wilson, who lived to the north of him. "Get Southdowns and nothing else," said James Remington, who lived to the west. "I'll get twenty of each and experiment with them separately," decided Jason. Now as between the Merino and the Southdown sheep there is a great gulf fixed. The Merino is small with gnarled horns, wrinkled neck and nose; with silk-like wool curling close to the skin in its fineness, yellow underneath because of its oiliness, and dark outside because of the dust gathered and held by such close, sticky coat. Well tried is the endurance of the sheep-washer who, in late spring before shearing time, stands waist deep in some stream and seeks to cleanse the fleece of a flock of shivering Merinos driven bleating to the water, and dreading it like a tramp. But the fine Merino wool commands a price; the fleece is heavy and the breeder profits from that, not from the mutton. The flesh of the Merino requires for its consumption people who have been long besieged and who are hungry. Different is the quality of the Southdown; not from Spanish ancestors, feeding on Andalusian hills, as came the Merino, did he come, but from Anglo-Saxon forefathers who cropped the herbage of the Hampshire and Sussex downs. Big and white of body and dark-faced, sturdy of build and garbed in clean, not over fine white wool, hornless but stepping free and high, the Southdown has a healthy individuality. As concerns his mutton, those who know how to eat, and what to eat, speak fluently while their eyes glisten. And almost as the flocks throve under Isaac, toiling for Rebecca, throve the flocks of Jason, toiling for Melissa. In summer and autumn they fed in the new pasture land and in winter they were sheltered and fared well in the old barn, now renovated and with a great shed attached for further room. Jason became absorbed in sheep-growing, as he had never been before in the growing of anything. He read books on the subject and tried experiments. At the end of the third year, with good flocks now his he selected from each the finest ram and ewe and entered them at the County fair. He wanted to learn with which breed he had been most successful.