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Page 6
When the fleece is parted and looked into with a good lens, the skin
appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, and the delicate wool fibers
are seen growing up among the strong hairs, like grass among stalks of
corn, every individual fiber being protected about as specially and
effectively as if inclosed in a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine
to stand by itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisible as
the floating threads of spiders, while the hairs against which they
lean stand erect like hazel wands; but, notwithstanding their great
dissimilarity in size and appearance, the wool and hair are forms of
the same thing, modified in just that way and to just that degree that
renders them most perfectly subservient to the well-being of the
sheep. Furthermore, it will be observed that these wild modifications
are entirely distinct from those which are brought chancingly into
existence through the accidents and caprices of culture; the former
being inventions of God for the attainment of definite ends. Like the
modifications of limbs--the fin for swimming, the wing for flying, the
foot for walking--so the fine wool for warmth, the hair for additional
warmth and to protect the wool, and both together for a fabric to wear
well in mountain roughness and wash well in mountain storms.
The effects of human culture upon wild wool are analogous to those
produced upon wild roses. In the one case there is an abnormal
development of petals at the expense of the stamens, in the other an
abnormal development of wool at the expense of the hair. Garden roses
frequently exhibit stamens in which the transmutation to petals may be
observed in various stages of accomplishment, and analogously the
fleeces of tame sheep occasionally contain a few wild hairs that are
undergoing transmutation to wool. Even wild wool presents here and
there a fiber that appears to be in a state of change. In the course
of my examinations of the wild fleeces mentioned above, three fibers
were found that were wool at one end and hair at the other. This,
however, does not necessarily imply imperfection, or any process of
change similar to that caused by human culture. Water lilies contain
parts variously developed into stamens at one end, petals at the
other, as the constant and normal condition. These half wool, half
hair fibers may therefore subserve some fixed requirement essential
to the perfection of the whole, or they may simply be the fine
boundary-lines where and exact balance between the wool and the hair
is attained.
I have been offering samples of mountain wool to my friends, demanding
in return that the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized and
confessed, but the returns are deplorably tame. The first question
asked, is, "Now truly, wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?"
while they peer curiously down among the hairs through lenses and
spectacles. "Yes, wild sheep, you HAVE wool; but Mary's lamb had
more. In the name of use, how many wild sheep, think you, would be
required to furnish wool sufficient for a pair of socks?" I endeavor
to point out the irrelevancy of the latter question, arguing that wild
wool was not made for man but for sheep, and that, however deficient
as clothing for other animals, it is just the thing for the brave
mountain-dweller that wears it. Plain, however, as all this appears,
the quantity question rises again and again in all its commonplace
tameness. For in my experience it seems well-nigh impossible to
obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from any other standpoint than
that of human use. Domestic flocks yield more flannel per sheep than
the wild, therefore it is claimed that culture has improved upon
wildness; and so it has as far as flannel is concerned, but all to the
contrary as far as a sheep's dress is concerned. If every wild sheep
inhabiting the Sierra were to put on tame wool, probably only a few
would survive the dangers of a single season. With their fine limbs
muffled and buried beneath a tangle of hairless wool, they would
become short-winded, and fall an easy prey to the strong mountain
wolves. In descending precipices they would be thrown out of balance
and killed, by their taggy wool catching upon sharp points of rocks.
Disease would also be brought on by the dirt which always finds a
lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled and water-soaked condition
into which it falls during stormy weather.
No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so
insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the
relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the
world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant,
and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught
from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.
I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made
for itself. Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish
isolation. In the making of every animal the presence of every other
animal has been recognized. Indeed, every atom in creation may be
said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with
universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the
purposes of the most intense individuality; no matter, therefore, what
may be the note which any creature forms in the song of existence, it
is made first for itself, then more and more remotely for all the
world and worlds.
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