The exhibit at Philadelphia of Oregon wool received medals and diplomas from the Commissioners of the Centennial of 1876, with high and deserved praise. And the show at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 was also splendid; the Oregon fleeces equaling the Australian in length, strength, evenness, and beauty of fiber. [Sidenote: _PRICE OF SHEEP._] I shall have a little more to say as to the breeds of sheep when the State Fair at Salem is described, where the best specimens were supposed to be, and I believe were collected. Sheep in this valley are worth from $1.25 to $1.75 for store-sheep for the flock, and from $2 to $3 for mutton-sheep in winter. The wool of a sheep may be taken to fetch $1 on an average of seasons. The sheep eat grass all the year round; they have never seen a turnip or cole-seed. I know many farmers who have kept sheep successfully for twenty years on nothing whatever but the natural wild grasses. The great enemy of the sheep in these foot-hills, where the pasture is intermixed with brush, and borders on the thicker brush and timber of the mountains behind, is the coyote. Two or three of these little wolves will keep half a county on the alert, destroying far more than they eat. This "varmint" is somewhat larger than a Scottish sheep-dog, and of a tawny color; he has long hair like a colley, and is much more cowardly than fierce. He lives in the thick brush, whence he steals out at dusk on his murderous errand. He hunts generally alone, though one of our friends saw three together one evening this winter. His pace is a long, untiring gallop, and it takes a very good hound to run him down. The usual plan of the hunt is for several rifles to command the outlets from a piece of woodland, and then to take into the brush a collection of five or six of the best hounds that can be got together. When the scoundrel breaks cover he may go fast, but the rifle-bullet or buckshot goes the faster, and it would not do to miss. The sheep killed by the coyote is identified by the two little holes on either side of the throat, where the wolf has struck and held to drink the fast-flowing life-blood. The carcass is rarely torn. But the worse and more common coyote is the mongrel hound. Every now and again one of these impostors takes to murdering, and, demure and quiet as he looks by day, slouching around the barn, spends his nights killing the neighbors' sheep. There is not much chance for him if he is but once seen; his life is a very short if a merry one.