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LIBRARY OF USEFUL, KNOWLEDGE.
Di E eeP:
BREEDS, MANAGEMENT, AND DISEASES.
THE MOUNTAIN SHEPHERD’S MANUAL.
TUE LEICESTER RAM.
PUBLISHED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF
THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.
LONDON: BALDWIN AND CRADOCK, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
AEL m
MDCCCOXXXVII.
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PREFACE.
Tue cultivation of the sheep and the manufacture of the fleece have, from the earliest period of history, formed the most important branclies of the agriculture and the commerce of Great Britain. Many years did not pass after the subjugation of our island by the Romans, ere the most valuable and expensive woollen robes, and worn oti days of ceremony alone, were furnished by the British factories. The language of Dionysius Alexan- drinus, quoted in the present volume, could be justified only on the sup- position of very superior excellence : “ The wool of Britain is often spun so fine, that it is in a manner comparable to the spider’s thread.”
_ It was not in the larger factories alone that the conversion of the fleece of the sheep into fabrics of various kinds was carried on; this formed a constant and a large portion of the domestic employment, and that not only _ inthe cottage, but in the palace. The mother and the sisters of that patriot monarch, Alfred, whose name will be venerated as long as British liberty remains, devoted much of their leisure time to the labours of the spinning- wheel. So universal, in fact, was this employment, and, consequently, so numerous the animals from whom the material was obtained, and the fabrics that were devoted to domestic use, that the sheep and its wool were eatly and unequivocally acknowledged to be the foundation of the national prosperity and wealth. Wool became the substitute for money. Did any domestic contention exist, so many pounds of it were deinanded from each vassal—was any foreign enterprise attempted, the wool furnished the sinews of war—or, was a monarch to be released from captivity, the ransom was calculated by the number of sacks of wool. In all the middle periods of British history, the fleece was the expression and the measure of national prosperity or calamity.
If, in process of time, other branches of commerce should be opened, and particularly the introduction of the silk manufacture begin in some measure to lessen the demand for woollen goods, and the establishment of the cotton ‘trade cause a complete revolution in the consumption and the value of the staple commodity of the kingdom, still the sheep and its fleece are objects of paramount importance. No fewer than 32,000,000 of these useful animals graze on our pastures. Exclusive of the value of the carcase, that of the fleece alone cannot be less than seven millions of pounds ster- ling, employing nearly 350,000 individuals, and ultimately yielding manu- factures to the amount of at least twenty-one millions of pounds annually.
The recollection and the deep impression of these things must be pleaded, if apology is necessary, as an excuse for the laboured detail, given _
A2
iv ; ; PREFACE.
in this volume, of the history of the sheep from the earliest period to the present day—and also for the minuteness with which the different qualities of the fleece and the different manipulations of the manufacture have been described.
To the discovery of the serrated construction of the fibre of wool, so beautifully explaining its felting property, the author does beg leave to assert his unequivocal claim. More than one physiologist had main- tained that a structure like this would best account for the property of felting; but the author of this work was the first who had seen and given ocular demonstration of its existence, and of the increasing number and firmness of the serrations in proportion to the felting property of the wool on the one hand, and their decrease in development and in number where that quality failed. The microscope of Mr. Powell fully and fairly brought this out. It was one of extraordinary power. In other microscopes which the author has had especially constructed, the serrated edge remains, but not that difference of serration which would enable the examiner to pronounce unhesitatingly and accurately on the character of the wool. He pledges himself, however, to follow up the inquiry—an inquiry which will be suc- cessfully pursued by some observer at no distant time ; and, when he is enabled honestly to do so, he will publish a collection of the microscopic appearances of different wools, with an especial regard to their felting and manufacturing qualities.
The medical treatment of sheep is comparatively a new subject. The author has to acknowledge many very important communications from old and valued friends. He does flatter himself that some addition has been made to the stock of veterinary knowledge as it regards this animal; and he trusts that the time is not far distant when the good common sense of the British Farmer, and the determination of a wise and patriotic govern- ment, will cause a knowledge of the diseases, and general management of these useful animals, to form a prominent object in the education of the veterinary surgeon.
z W. YOUATT.
June 15th, 1837.
CONTENTS.
Page PREFACE oe - É é È a lik
Carrer L—THE ZOOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF THE SHEEP. 1
The different names applied to it according to its age—The marks by which its age may be ascertained—The natural duration of its life—Description of the teeth.
Cuaprer II.—THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE SHEEP. p-
The antediluvian sheep—The offering of Abel—The flesh not at first used for food, but only the miik—The skins of sheep used for dress—Early improvement of sheep—The first wandering shepherds—The covering of the tent made of the fleece—Felting—After the flood, the sheep used as food—Description of the ancient Patriarchs—The peregrina- tions of the Arabs—Their numerous flocks—Their hospitality—The old wells—Jacob and Laban—The flocks tended by women—The first great improvement of the sheep— The progress of improvement—The original breed, homed—The original breed, probably the fat-rumped sheep—The present Tartarian sheep—The Abyssinian fat-rumped sheep —The parts of the sheep used in sacrifice—Management of the primitive sheep—The occasional want of water—Wild beasts—The ancient dog—The shepherd’s command over his flock—Music—Humanity of the shepherds—The ancient sheep-shearing— Cotting the sheep—Weaving, the employment of the women—Embroidery—Tithes The breed of Bashan—The male only eaten—Manner of cooking—Castration—The milk of the sheep—Comparison of different kinds of milk—Old manufacture of cheese —Polyphemus—Arab ewe milk, butter and cheese— British ditto — Objections to ewe- milking—Under what circumstances allowed—The Iceland ewe-milking—French ewe- milk cheese.
Cusprir III.—THE SKIN AND THE WOOL. . 52
The structure of the skin—Value of the pelt—Anatomy of the wool—Difference be- tween wool and hair—Wool-bearing animals—The first sheep probably hairy—The gradual change from hair to wool—The yolk—The periodical fall of the wool and hair —The form of the fibre of wool—The woolstapler—The properties of wool—Fineness —The influence of climate, temperature, and pasture—Trueness—Soundness—Soft- ness—Elasticity—Colour —Felting properties—The spirally-curling form of wool— The felting properties resumed—Theories of felting—A glimpse of the true principle —Microscopic appearance of hair and wool—Discovery of the irregular surface of wool —The first public view of the serrated edge of wool—Comparison of this serrated edge with the felting properties of particular wools—The serrated edge of different wools— The Saxony—The South Down—The Leicester—The advantage of this microscopic study of the wool—Other wool-bearing animals—The rabbit—The seal—The bear— The wolf-dog—The tiger—The difference between wool, hair, and fur—The divisions of wool—Long wool—Middle wool—Short wool—The manufacturing uses of wool—- Table of the importation of wool into Great Britain—The scribbler—The carder— Felt- ing—Finishing—Combing—The difference between the woollen and the worsted manufactory—The anticipated improvement.
Cuarrer IV.—THE FOREIGN BREED OF SHEEP. 7 108
Models—The skeleton of the sheep—The new Leicester—The South Down—The Che- viot—The Far-Tamep SHerp—The Eayprran—The Eruiop1an—The Apyssrnzan-— The Mapacascar—The Care—History of the establishment of the sheep colony at the Cape—The Ancona sheep—The Guinsa—The Bearpep—Barsiry—Fuzzan—Mo- rocco—The Tunis sheep in America—The Fat-tailed sheep in England—The Asiatic sheep—Tuise1—East-Inpran—Deccan—Cr YLon—J s vanuse—Cninese—TarTarian
vi CONTENTS,
—The Astatic ArGant—The American ditio—The Movurion or Musman—Noaru AMERICAN sheep—Wesr Inp1a—Sourn AMERICAN.
Cuartur V.—THE EUROPEAN SHEEP. ° Page 136
The Russtan sheep—Opzssa wool—The Wat acutan sheep—Its wool—The Mor- pavian sheep—The Moravian—The Greex—The Cyprus—SrcemiuNn—Irsanian—Piep- MONTESE—Savox—Swiss—Spanisa—The origin of the Spanish sheep—The divisions of them—The present Merinos—Character of the wool—Original management of— Account of their migrations—Shearing—Cuts of the wwol—The Swxpisu sheep—The Frencu sheep—The Paris market—French wool—The Rambouillet flock—The Alfort flock—The Norwereian sheep—The Daniso—The Frroz—The Icenann—The Azores —The Saxon—The. introduction and establishment of the Merinos in Saxony—The Pruss1an—The Sirustan—-The Hunaarran—The Hanovertan—The FremisuH and Durcu—The introduction of the Merinos into Brirais—The difficulties to be con- tended with—The first sale—The Merino sesiety—The decay of the Anglo-Merinos— The Merinos in Ireland—The New. South Wares sheep—History of the establishment of the colony—Cuts of the wool—Western and Southern Australia—The Van DiemeEn’s Lano sheep—Cuts of the wool.
CHAPTER VI.—A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE BRITISH SHEEP AND WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES. e 2 192
: „The early commerce of the Britons—They traded in skins—The probably aboriginal breed—The first woollen manufactory—Probably the short wool principally used in it— First mention of the price of a sheep—Spinning of wool, the employment even of the royal family—The extirpation of wolves—The woollen manufacture under the Norman kings—Under Stephen—The establishment of guilds—The ransom of Richard I. paid in wool—Woollen dressers or dealers—The exportation of British cloth—The wool- stapler— The merchant-strangers — The merchant-adventurers — Improvement of the manufacture under Edward II{.—The prices of the different wools in 1341—The chan ge in the character of the British wool—Present of wool to the king of Portugal—Intro- duction of the silk manufacture—British sheep exported to Flanders—The degradation of the fleece under Henry VIII.—The smallness of the sheep at this time—The enclo- sure of waste grounds—The revival of the wool trade under Elizabeth—Change in the character of the manufacture—The Turkish company——-The inventor of the stocking- frame—The East-India Company—Decline of the manufacture under the Stuarts— The number of sheep at different periods—The revival of the trade—The gradually altered character of the wool—The consequence of this—The establishment of the cotton manufacture—The present state of the woollen trade.
Cuarrer VII—THE MIDDLE-WOOLLED BREED OF SHEEP. . 231
The Sourn Downs—Description and management of—The wool—the gradual change in—Its increased value—The Kenrisn sheep—The Surrey, BERKSHIRE, Hamesuire, Isue oy Wicur, Wi.tsuire—Cut of the Wiltshire wool—The Merinos still in England—The Dorsnr—Management of early Lambs—The Devon sheep— The CORNISH, SOMERSET, GLOUCESTER, Monmouru, Ryeranp,—Cut of the Ryeland woo!—The Worcester sheep, SHROPSHIRE, STAFFORDSHIRE, CHESHIRE, GLAMORGAN, BRECKNOCK, CAERMARTHEN, PEMBROKE, CARDIGAN, RADNOR, ANGLESEA, CAERNARVON, MERIONETH, MONTGOMERY, LANCASTER, WESTMORELAND, CUMBERLAND, NoRTRUMBER- LAND, ScorTışsu—The Buacx-racep Cxrvior—Comparative value of the Cheviot and Black-faced sheep—A storm in the Highlands—Comparative losses by storms—The advantages of Stells—The necessity of smearing—Various crosses of the Cheviots— Cuts of Cheviot wool—A sketch of the mountain sheep —Farming—The Arran sheep — The Isuay—The Java—The Hesrmrs—The Orxney Istanpns—The SHETLAND—ISLE or Man—YorxksHire—The Minianp Counties--The Norrork.
Cuarter VIJI.—THE LONG-WOOLLED BREEDS OF SHEEP: . 312
The Orp Lescesrers—The New Lercesrers—Early History of them—Mr. Bake- well’s plan—The system of ram-letting—The Dishley society —Mr. Paget’s sale—Com- parison of the Leicesters with other breedt—Their influence on other breeds—The revolution which they have effected—Sketch of the Messrs. Culley in the north—The Treswaters—The Lincotn sheep—Cuts of the modern Lincoln wool—The Romney Marsa sheep— The Sovrn-Ham Norrs—The Bauprons—The Corswo.p— The Mivianp Lone-woo..ep Surerp—Luccock and Hubbard's tables of the change of
British wool.
CONTENTS. vii
Page Cuarrer IX.—THE IRISH SHEEP, . : . 346
Early history of the Irish sheep—The complete change which has been effected— Description of the modern wool—TIrish mauufactures—Description of the sheep in each county— The Kirxrnny sheep—The Wick.ow sheep—The wool fair at Rathdrum— The Gaiway sheep—Ballinasloe fair.
Cuarrern X.—THE ANATOMY, DISEASES, AND GENERAL MANAGE- MENT OF THE SHEEP, THE SENSORIAL FUNCTION. - 361
The brain and spinal cord—The skull—Horns—Comparison between the horned and polled sheep—The bot in the sinuses of the head—The proper form of the head—The im- portance of this—Swelled head—The intelligence of the sheep—Their attachment to each other—Fracture of the skull—Hydatid on the brain-—Comparison of the different opera- tions—W ater in the head—Abscess in the brain—Apoplexy—Inflammation of the brain —Diseases of the spinal cord—Locked jaw—¥pilepsy—Palsy—Rabies, or madness— The acute sense of smell—Description of the eyes—Importance of the examination of the eyes—Soreness of the lids—Falling of'the eye-lashes — Watery tamours—Inflammation of the eyes—Adhesion of the lids to the eyes—Larkspurring—Cataract—Gutta serena —Blindness—The sense of hearing—The different form and direction of the ears in the different breeds—Supposed importance of the form of the ear—Uleeration of the ear, and particularly as connected with the fly—The acute sense of taste.
‘CHAPTER XI—THE DIGESTIVE FUNCTION. A + a0
The peculiar form of the lips—Teeth only in the lower jaw—The intention of this— Blain, or inflammation of the tongue—Aptha or thrush“in the mouth—The glands of the mouth—The construction of the palate—Description of the mouth—The proper form of the neck—The guliet— Obstruction in it—The proper form of the chest and belly— The stomach—The paunch or first stomach—lIts construction—The reticulum or honey- comb—The process of rumination—Distension of the stomach with food— Hoove, or distension of it with gas—Puncture ofthe paunch—place of puneture—Proper medicines and treatment—Poisoning—Coneretions in the paunch—Inflammation of the paunch— “Loss of cud—Singular construction of the maniplus—Diseases of this stomach—The abomasum or fourth stomach— Diseases of it—Bezoars or calculi in the abomasum—The spleen—Enlargement and fatal diseases-of it—The pancreas—The liver—Deseription of it—Nature and use of the bile—Diseases of the liver—The rot—Dreadful mortality occasioned by it—Has existed from time immemorial—Symptons of—The liver the principal organ affected—Deseription of the fluke-worm—Cause of the rot—-Connected with the soil and state of pasturage, more especially with breathing the miasmata from decomposing vegetables—The animal infected in a moment—Strange accounts of this—The circumstances and seasons most favourable to its development—The grand prevention is the drainage of the land—The great care that should be taken in that drainage—The treatment—Removal—Dry food—The administration of common salt—The rot in Egypt—Structure and function of the duodenum, jejunum, ileum, cecum, colon, and rectum—Value of sheep’s dung—The question of tolding—Acute dropsy or redwater—The nature and treatment of—Diseases of the small intestines— Colic—Strangulation or gut-tie— I ntrosusception—Enteritis—Diarrhoea—Dysentery— Constipation.
Cuaprer XIL—THE ABSORBENT SYSTEM. : - 472
Description and function of the lacteals—The mesenteric glands—The lymphatics—- Tumours of different kinds.
Cuarrrr XIII.—THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM.
Description of the heart and its action. The cord in-the ventricle. The bone of the heart—Sharp substances often work their way into the heart—The arteries—The pulse—The capillaries— Inflammation and fever— Inflammatory fever—Malignant inflammatory fever—La maladie Sologne—Typhus fever—The veins—Rules for bleed- ing—The proper places for it.
Cuaprer XIV.—THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM, = 484
°
The change in the blood during respiration—The respiratory passages—Nasal dis charge—-Glanders in sheep—-Strangles—The os hyoides—The mechanism of the larynx
Vili CONTENTS.
—The thyroid glands—The windpipe — Catarrh— Laryngitis — Bronchitis — Acute inflammation of the lungs—Consumption—Epidemic diseases—Description of a dread- ful epidemic in New South Wales.
-HAPTER XV.—BREEDING—THE GENERATIVE AND URINARY SYSTEMS “ . . Page 493
The grand principles of breeding—The importance of getting rid of every faulty sheep—The principle of selection, with cautious admixture—Proper age of the ewe for breeding—Best time for lambing—Time for putting the ram with the ewes—Period of pregnaney—Management of the ewe during pregnancy—Abortion—The immediate preparation for lambing—Duties of the lamber—Natural labour—False presentations— The Cawsarian operation—Inversion of the womb—Inflammation of ditto—A fter-pains —Monstrosities—Care of the lambs—Affection of the ewe—Substitute lamb—After- care of the lambs—Twins—Cuckoo and gull lambs—Castration—Docking—Garget— Spaying—W eaning—Diseases of lambs—Diarrhea—Curdling of the milk—Costiye- ness—Fever—Sorting of the lambs.
Cuarrer XVI—THE LOCOMOTIVE ORGANS ®t 681
Difference inthe quantity of bone—Fractures—Swelling of the jots—Rheumatism . —Strains—Diseases of the foot—Disease of the biflex canal and fetlock joints—Foot- rot—Cause —Progress—Treatment—Highly contagious—Satisfactory experiments of this.
Cuaprer XVIL—THE INTEGUMENT. . . 535
The structure of the skin—Little cutaneous perspiration—Little radiation of animal heat—Infectious diseases not readily communicated—The scab or rubbers—Spread by means of the rubbing places—Produced by insects—Cuts of them—Produced also by neglect—Method of cure—Erysipelatous seab—Wildfire—Ignis sacer—Lice and ticks —Method of destroying them—The fly—Sheep-shearing —The washing—The operation itself—The cruelty of shearing fat sheep early in the spring—Salving or smearing— The question of it—Its absolute necessity in cold and exposed situations. :
Cuarrer XVITI.—THE GRASSES AND FATTENING OF SHEEP. 549
The system of sheep-feeding—The general inattention to the comparative nutritive qualities of the different grasses—Mr. Sinclair’s experiments on them—The sweet- scented vernal grass—Meadow foxtail—Smooth and rough stalked and short blue mea- dow—Sheep, Welsh—Hard and meadow fescue—Round-headed cocksfoot—Narrow- leaved and fertile meadow—Rye-crested dogtail—Yellow-oat and meadow—Cat’s-tail grass—Bent’s mangel-wurzel—Potatoes—Peas—Barley— Oil-cake— Corn—Hay,
Cuarrer XIX.—A LIST OF THE DRUGS USED IN THE TREAT- MENT OF THE DISEASES OF SHEEP. ees . 554
Aléohol—Aloes—Alteratives — Alum—Antimony—Arsenic—-Calamine —Camphor— Catechu — Chalk — Corrosive sublimate—Digitalis—Epsom salts—Gentiun—Ginger —Iodine — Lead—Lime — Linseed o0i]—Mercury—Calomel—WNitrate of silver—Nitre —Opium—Salt—Sulphur—Tar— Spirit of tar—Turpentine—Oil and spirit of ditto— Zine.
THE MOUNTAIN SHEPHERD’S MANUAL,
CHAPTER Í.
The Zoological Character of the Sheep—The differént Names applied to it according to its Age—The Marks by which its Age may be ascertained, and the natural Dura- tion of its Life—Description of the Teeth.
Tue Sheep, according to Cuvier*, belongs to the Orper RUMINANTIA ; having teeth in the lower jaw only, opposed to a callous substance in the upper jaw ; six molar teeth on either side, and the joint of the lower jaw adapted for a grinding motion ; four stomachs, and these, with the œsopha- gus, so constructed that the food is returned for the purpose of rumination ; long intestines not cellated :
— the Trine Capripz ; the horns, where they are found, being perma- nent; placed on a vascular bony basis or process; the horny sheath receiv- ing its increase by annual ringlets at the base, forming deep sulci around the horn, with others as deep running longitudinally, and dividing the surface of the horn into a succession of irregularities or knots. The general structure light, and adapted for springing or swiftness; the ears usually erect and funnel-shaped ; the pupils of the eye oblong, and there not being any canine teeth in the mouth:
— the Genus Ovis; with or without horns, and these, where present, taking more or less a spiral direction ; the forehead or outline of the face convex ; no lacrymal or respiratory opening under the eye; the nostrils lengthened and terminating without a muzzle ; no beard; the body covered with short close hair with a downy wool beneath, and, in a do- mestic state, the wool prevailing over the hair, or quite superseding it; the legs slender, yet firm, and without brushes or callosities.
Of these there are three varieties : the Ovis Ammon, or Argali ; the Ovis Musmon, or Musmon; and the Ovis Aries, or Domestic Sheep. The two first will be described in a future chapter, the last will form the principal subject of this work.
There is considerable resemblance between the ovis or sheep, and the capra or goat, another genus of the tribe Capridze, the history and uses of which will be described in the after part of this volume. The distinctions between them are chiefly these: many sheep are without horns; the horns of sheep have a spiral direction, while those of the goat have a direction upwards and backwards; the forehead of sheep is convex, and that of the goat concave; the sheep has, except in one wild variety, nothing resem- bling a beard, but the goat is bearded; while the goat, in his highest state of improvement, and when he is made to produce wool of a fineness unequalled by the sheep, as in the Cashmere breed, is mainly, and always externally, covered with hair, the hair on the sheep may, by domestication,
* Animal Kingdom, Synopsis, B
2 SHEEP,
be reduced to a few kemps (coarse hairs), or got rid of altogether; and finally, the pelt or skin of the goat has a thickness very far exceeding that of the sheep.
Agriculturists have applied different names to the sheep according to its sex and age.
The male is called a ram or tup. While he is with the mother he is denominated a tup or ram-lamb, a heeder ; and in some parts of. the west of England, a pur-lamb. From the time of his weaning, and until he is shorn, he has a variety of names: he is called a hog, a hogget, a hoggerel, a lamb-hog, a tup-hog, or a teg ; and, if castrated, a wether hog. After shearing, when probably he is a year and a half old, he is called a shearing, a shearling, a shear-hog, a diamond or dinmont ram, or tup; and a shear- ing wether, &c., when castrated. After the second shearing he is a two- shear ram, or tup, or wether; at the expiration of another year he is a three-shear ram, &c,; the name always taking its date from the time of shearing.
In many parts of the north of England and Scotland he is a tup-lamb after he is salved, and until he is shorn, and then a tup-hog, and, after that, a tup, or if castrated, a dinmont or a wedder.
The female is a ewe, or gimmer lamb, until weaned; and then a gimmer hog, or ewe hog, or teg, or sheeder ewe. After being shorn she is a shearing ewe or gimmer, sometimes a theave, or double-toothed ewe or teg; and afterwards, a two-shear, or three-shear, or a four or six-tooth ewe or theave, In some of the northern districts, ewes that are barren, or that have weaned their jambs, are called eild or yeld ewes.
The age of sheep is not reckoned from the time that they are dropped, but from the first shearing, although the first year may thus include fifteen or sixteen months, and sometimes more.
When there is doubt about the age of a sheep, recourse is had to the teeth, for there is even more uncertainty about the horn in horned sheep than there is in cattle; and ewes that have been early bred from, will always, according to the rings on the horn, appear a year older than others that, although of the same age, have been longer kept from the ram.
It has already been stated, that sheep have no teeth in the upper jaw, but the bars or ridges of the palate thicken as they approach the fore part of the mouth; there also the dense, fibrous, elastic matter of which they are constructed, becomes condensed, and forms a cushion or bed that covers the convex extremity of the upper jaw, and occupies the place of the upper incisor or cutting teeth, and partially discharges their function. The herb- age is firmly held between the front teeth in the lower jaw and this pad, and thus partly bitten, and partly torn asunder. The nodding motion of the head of the sheep is a sufficient proof of this.
This animal is one of those especially destined to support man with his flesh ; and that he may be able to do this with the least possible expendi- ture of food, and to extract the whole of the nutriment which the herbage contains, a provision common to all ruminants (as will hereafter be more fully explained) is made in the construction of the stomachs, and other parts of the digestive apparatus. As the first process by which the food is prepared for digestion, it is macerated for a considerable time in the paunch. The frequent and almost necessary consequence of the long con- tinuance of the food in this stomach, exposed to the united influence of heat and moisture, will be the commencement of fermentation and decom- position, and the extrication of a considerable quantity of injurious gas. This often takes place, and many sheep are destroyed by the distension of the paunch caused by this-extrication of gas. The process of fermentation
THE TEETH. 3
and decomposition is accompanied by the presence or development of an acescent principle. It has been stated that an elastic pad occupies the place of teeth in the upper jaw; and that it is by a half biting and half tearing action that the sheep gathers his food: the necessary consequence is, that some of the grass, of harder construction than the rest, does not give way, but is torn up by the roots; a portion of the mould adheres to the roots, and is swallowed, and, all our soils containing more or less absorbent or calcareous earth, the acid is neutralized, and, as it were, removed, as rapidly as it is formed; except in some extreme cases, attri- butable almost entirely to the neglect or thoughtlessness of the proprietor of the sheep.
The teeth of the sheep are the same in number as in the mouth of the ox. ‘There are eight incisor or cutting teeth in the fore part of the lower jaw, and six molars in each jaw above and below, and on either side. The incisors are more admirably formed for the purpose of grazing than in the ox. The sheep bites closer than the ox ; he was destined to live where the other would starve: he was designed in many places to follow the other, and to gather sufficient nourishment where the ox would be unable to crop a single blade. Two purposes are answered by this: all the nutriment that the land produces is gathered from it, and the pasture is made to pro- duce more herbage than by any other means it could be forced to do. The sheep by his close bite not only loosens the roots of the grass, and dis- poses them to spread, but by cutting off the short suckers and sproutings, —a wise provision of nature—causes the plant to throw out fresh, and more numerous, and stronger ones, and thus improves and increases the value of the crop. Nothing will more expeditiously or effectually make a thick permanent pasture than its being occasionally and closely eaten down by sheep.
In order to enable the sheep to bite thus close, the upper lip is deeply divided, and free from hair about the centre of it,
The stalks of the common herbage of the field, bitten thus closely as they are by the sheep, are harder and more fibrous than the portions that are divided and cropped by cattle; and not only so, but some breeds of sheep are destined to live, in part at least, on harder food than falls to the lot of cattle, as the different kinds of heath, or substances almost as diffi- cult to be broken off as the branches of the heath. The incisor teeth are evidently formed for browsing on these dense productions of the soil, which would otherwise be altogether useless and lost. The part of the tooth above the gum is not only, as in other animals, covered with enamel to enable it to bear and to preserve a sharpened edge, but the enamel on the upper part rises from the bone of the tooth nearly a quarter of an inch, and, presenting a convex surface outwards, and a concave one within, forms a little scoop or gouge capable of wonderful execution. He who will take the trouble to compare together the incisor teeth of cattle and of sheep—both ruminants—both by means of the half-cutting and half- tearing action having the stomach, in which the process of maceration is going forward, abundantly supplied with absorbent or alkaline earth—-the one, however, destined to crop little more than the summit of the grass, and the other to go almost close to the roots, and occasionally to browse on harder food—will have a not uninteresting illustration of the manner in which every part of every animal is adapted to the situation in which he is placed, and the destiny he is to fulfil. The pad also is firmer and denser than in cattle, yet sufficiently elastic, so that it is in no danger of injury from the sharp chisels below, while the interposed substance is cut through with the greatest ease.
B2
SHEEP.
The mouth of the lamb newly dropped is either without incisor teeth, or it has two. The teeth rapidly succeed to each other, and before the animal is a month old he has the whole of the eight. They continue to grow with his growth until he is about fourteen or sixteen months old,
Fig. 4. Fig. 5e Inthe accompanying cut, fig. 1 will give a fair representation of the mouth of a sheep at this age. Then, with the same previous process of diminution which was described in cattle, or carried to a still greater degree, the two central teeth are shed, and attain their full growth when the sheep is two years old. Fig. 2 gives a delineation of the mouth at this age.
In examining a flock of sheep, however, there will often be very con- siderable difference in the teeth of the hogs, or the one-shears ; in some measure to be accounted for bya difference in the time of lambing, and likewise by the general health and vigour of the animal. There will also be a material difference in different flocks, attributable to the good or bad keep which they have had.
Those fed on good land, or otherwise well kept, will take the start of others that have been half-starved, and renew their teeth some months sooner than these. There are, however, exceptions to this; Mr. Price* says that a Romney Marsh teg was exhibited at the show fair at Ashford, weighing 15 stones +}, and the largest ever shown there of that breed, and that had not one of his permanent broad teeth.
There are also irregularities in the times of renewing the teeth, not to be accounted for by either of these circumstances ; in fact, not to be accounted for by any known circumstance relating to the breed or the keep of the sheep. The same author remarks, that he has known tups have four broad and permanent teeth, when, according to their age, they ought to have had but two ț. Mr. Culley, in his excellent work on ‘ Live Stock,’ says—‘ A friend of mine and an eminent breeder, Mr. Charge, of Cleasby, a few years ago showed a shearing-tup at Richmond, in Yorkshire, for the pre- mium given by the Agricultural Society there, which had six broad teeth ; in consequence of which the judges rejected his tup, although confessediy the best sheep, because they believed him to be more than a shearing: however, Mr. Charge afterwards proved to their satisfaction that his tup was no more than a shearing §.” Mr. Price, on the other hand, states that he “once saw a yearling wether, which became quite fat with only one tooth, that had worked a cavity in the upper jaw, the corresponding central tooth having been accidentally lost.”
* Price on Sheep Grazing, &c., p. 84. } The weights will all be calculated according to the new regulation of 14 lbs, to the stone.
t Price on Sheep Grazing, &e., p. 83. § Ib, p 214.
THE AGE AS INDICATED BY THE TEETH. 5
The want of improvement in sheep which is occasionally observed, and which cannot be accounted for by any deficiency or change of food, may sometimes be justly attributed to the tenderness of the mouth when the permanent teeth are protruding through the gums,
Between two and three years old the two next incisors are shed; and when the sheep is actually three years. old the four central teeth are fully grown (see fig. 3): at four years old he has six teeth fully grown (see fig. 4): andat five years old all the teeth are perfectly developed (see fig. 6). This is one year before the horse or the ox can be said to be full-mouthed. The sheep isa much shorter lived animal than the horse, and does not often attain the usual age of the ox.
The careless examiner may sometimes be deceived with regard to the four-year-old mouth. He will see the teeth perfectly developed—no dimi- nutive ones at the sides, and the mouth apparently full; and then, without giving himself the trouble of counting the teeth, he will conclude that the sheep is five years old. A process of displacement, as well as of diminu- tion, has taken place here,—the remaining outside milk-teeth are not only shrunk to less than a fourth part of their original size, but the four-year-old teeth have grown before them and perfectly conceal them, unless the mouth is completely opened. Fig. 5 represents this deceptive appearance.
After the permanent teeth have all appeared and are fully grown, there is no criterion as to the age of the sheep. In most cases the teeth remain sound for one or two years, and then, at uncertain intervals, either on account of the hard work in which they have been employed, or from the natural effect of age, they begin to loosen and fall out ; or, by reason of their natural slenderness, they are broken off. When favourite ewes that have been kept for breeding begin, at six or seven years old, to lose condition, their mouths should be carefully examined. If any of the teeth are loose they should be extracted, and a chance given to the animal to show how far, by browsing early and late, she may be able to make up for the diminished number of her incisors, It will not unfrequently happen that ewes with broken teeth, and some with all the incisors gone, will keep pace in condition with the best in the flock ; but they must be well taken care of in the winter, and, indeed, nursed to an extent that would scarcely answer the farmer’s purpose to adopt as a general rule, in order to prevent them from declining to such a degree as would make it very difficult after- wards to fatten them for the butcher. It may certainly be taken as a general rule that when sheep become broken-mouthed they begin to decline.
It will probably appear, when the subjects of breeding and grazing are discussed, that it will be the most profitable course to fatten the ewes when they are five, or at most, six years old, and supply their places with the most likely shearing-ewes. When a sheep gets much older than this, it begins to decline in its wool, and certainly loses much of its pre- pensity to fatten ; while, in the usual system of sheep husbandry, the prin- ciple profit consists in early and quick fattening. . À
Causes of which the farmer is utterly ignorant, or over which, he has no control, will sometimes hasten the loss of the teeth. Mr. Price says that the teeth of “the sheep in Romney Marsh decay much sooner than in any other part of England*,” Although this is stated with regard to his native and favourite breed of sheep, it is probably an incautious expression, and an accusation which the Romney Marsh flock do not deserve. One thing however is certain, that close feeding, causing additional exercise of the teeth, does wear them down ; and that the sheep of the farmers who
* Pave 84,
8 SHEEP,
stock unusually and unseasonably hard, lose their teeth much sooner than others do *,
The natural age of sheep it is difficult to assign. They will usually five, and breed, and thrive tolerably well, until they are ten years old ; but there are instances of their living and thriving to a much more protracted age. Lamerville speaks of a Spanish ram, thirteen years old, that died sound and got lambs in his thirteenth year t. Mr. Moore, of Winthorpe, had on his pastures in 1824 a ewe that yeaned a pair of lambs when she was a shearling, had two pairs yearly for fifteen years, and in the last two years produced single lambs {. Mr. Culley has “ heard of particular sheep living to nearly twenty years old,—those which the mountain shepherds call guide-sheep, viz., old wethers kept on purpose to guide and direct the bleating flocks upon those unfrequented wilds §.”
The molar teeth or grinders of the sheep are well adapted for lacerating, and reducing almost to a pulp, the grassy or more hardened fibres which compose a great proportion of the food of the animal. They are not only surrounded by enamel, but columns of it sink deep into their substance and rise above the upper surface of them. The faces of these teeth are cut into a number of deep grooves running across them, from without, inwards, and the projecting parts of the teeth of the one jaw are received into the depressed grooves of those of the other.
The faces of the molars being also slanting, in a direction from without, inwards in the lower jaw, and from within, outwards in the upper one, and the projecting edges of the enamel being exceedingly sharp, it is almost impossible that, in the lateral grinding motion of the lower jaw in the act of rumination, and the slow and careful manner in which it is per- formed, many of the fibres can escape, or if they do, there is an after provision for reducing them, which will, in the proper place, be described.
CHAPTER II
The antediluvian Sheep—The Offering of Abel—The Sheep probably not at first used for Food—The First Parents clothed with the Skins of Sheep—Later Improvements on this Species of Clothing—The Origin of the Nomadic Shepherds—The Discovery of Felting—Permitted to be used as Food—The wandering life of the ancient Patriarchs —Their Tents—Great numbers of Sheep and Cattle—The manner of life of the first Shepherds—The importance of Water for their Flocks—The old Wells—The labour of the Female in tending the Sheep and Drawing Water—Jacob and Laban—The first recorded Improvement in Sheep—The Origin of the White Fleece—Gradually spreads over the Western World—The Primitive Breed of Sheep horned—Characterized by Fatness about the Rump—The Fat-rumped Sheep of the present day—The Persian Sheep—Was there any single Original Breed of Sheep ?—Ancient Sheep Husbandry— The Duties of the Shepherd—His Sufferings from Drought or Cold—His Danger from Wild Beasts—No Dogs to assist in the Management of the Sheep—His own influence over the Flock—Gives Names to all the Sheep—They know his voice, and follow him— The Origin of the Shepherd’s Music—The Humanity of the Shepherd—His care of the Lambs—The plucking of the Wool—The invention of Sheep-shearing—The docility of the Sheep—The Festivities of the Season—Clothing the Sheep—Cotting— Weaving
* Mr. Dillon, in his ‘Travels in Spain in 1779,’ says that “ The teeth of the Spanish rams do not fall untilthe animal is eight years old ; whereas the ewes, from the delicacy of their frame, or from other causes, lose theirs at five years.”
+ Lamerville on Sheep, p. 102. į Farmer’s Journal, May 3, 1824,
§ Culley on Live Stock, p. 212.
THE MILK OF THE SHEEP EARLY USED. a
‘The state of the Manufacture of Wool—Spinning—Embroidery—The Male only usually destroyed—Animal Food seldom indulged in—The favourite parts—The stalled Ox—The Milk of the Ewe—Its properties—Cheese and Butter made from it—The Cave of Polyphemus—Different processes of making Butter—The use of the Ewe's Milk in other Countries—England—Scotland—France—The Rochfort Cheese.
THE ANTEDILUVIAN SHEEP.
Although there are’ few traces of the history of the sheep in the ante- diluvian age, yet mention is made of this animal very shortly after the expul- sion of Adam from Paradise. It is said that “ In the process of time,” or, as it might have been rendered, “ at the appointed time,” showing that it was a custom which either the Divine command, or the good feeling and the gratitude of the earliest race of men, had established—* Cain brought of the first fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord; and Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.”
Our first parents having been lately driven from Eden, where the earth spontaneously yielded them its fruits, and where, in a state of innocence, and living in a genial clime, the necessity of clothing was unfelt, Cain and Abel seem to have divided between them the future provision of the family : Abel became “ a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground.” One purpose for which these sheep were kept is sufficiently plain: instead of the insufficient and fragile covering of the fig-leaf, which they had contrived for themselves, it is recorded that “ Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins ;” or he taught them to make coats of skins and clothed them.
THE FLESH OF THE SHEEP NOT YET EATEN.
It is probable that the sheep was not then used for food. Ancient history is uniform in asserting, that in the golden or antediluvian age, the use of animal food was unknown*; and the language of Scripture, although not decisive, goes far to warrant the belief that the flesh of animals was not divinely sanctioned as the food of man until after the deluge. When Adam was first“ put into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it,” it is said unto him, “ Of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely eat,” save one. When he had offended and was expelled from Paradise, this is the sentence—‘‘ Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field ; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread t.”
The language to Noah after the deluge is very different :—" The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes ; into your hand are they delivered: every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you. Even as the green herb (which was formerly appointed to be your food) have I now given you all things.”
THE MILK OF THE SHEEP EARLY USED.
As to the other mode in which the sheep has through every period of ancient history, and, in many countries, even to the present day, contri- buted to the support of man—namely, by the milk obtained from the female,
* See Ovid’s Metamorphoses, lib. i. and xv. “ Not so the golden age—men fed on fruit, Nor durst with bloody meals their hands pollute.” Josephus, whose history of the Jews, next to that given by the sacred historians, ia most to be relied on, says expressly that “ Abel brought the miz of his flock.” f Gen. ii. 17, 18, 19.
CS ES EEE DS
| 3 hs Bei | Se sE
$ SHEEP.
the sacrifice of Abel may convey more information than the reader at first imagines. The Hebrew word, which is here translated “ fat,” is in other places rendered “ milk ;” asin Gen. xviii. 8, where Abram is said to have taken butter and milk, and set it before his guests. Let it be thus rendered in the account of this offering—* Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, even of the milk thereof,” or, “ he brought the milk belonging to the first-born and best of his flock ;” and it will appear that, even in so early a period of the world, the value of the sheep, as contributing both to the food and the clothing of man, was already understood, and that almost to the extent in which it is recognized at the present day by most of the shepherds of the eastern countries.
THE EARLIEST DRESS.
The dress of the first pair was precisely that of the inhabitants of every country in an early period of civilization, or before civilization can scarcely be said to have commenced. The inhabitants of ancient Greece are described as clothed in the skins of the animals which they had either domesticated or killed in hunting *. The Britons, when their island was first visited by Caesar, were either naked and their bodies fancifully painted, or clad in the skins of animals. Such is still, to a greater or less degree, the clothing of savages every where. At first the skins simply underwent the process of drying, and were then fastened round the neck of the wearer by a simple thorn, or a strip of leather ; and they were worn with the wool within or without, accordingly as the weather was cold or hot, wet or dry. By degrees they were fitted to and disposed on various parts of the body, and cut into various forms, or selected of various colours, according to the fancy of the wearer. There was room for the exertion of considerable caprice and ingenuity here.
THE EARLY IMPROVEMENT OF THE SHEEP.
Passing over the admixture, in process of time, of other skins of domes- ticated or tame animals, and confining the inquiry to those of the sheep alone, the commencement of the improvement of that animal, although perhaps proceeding very slowly, may be easily anticipated and believed, The colour would be an object of some importance. The skin would be valued according to its purity or brightness, or fashion (for early must have been the period of the world when that power had not begun to exert its influence) ; and an attempt would be made to perpetuate this colour in the flock. || Individuals would be selected to breed from with an especial regard to this purpose, and the fundamental principles of breeding would be recog- nized and acted upon. / The size of the skin would sometimes be a material object, and large sheep would be selected. The warmth of the clothing would be a more important affair, and thick and close, or long and shaggy fleeces would be sought after. The unpleasant sensation caused by the contact of coarse wool with the skin would lead to the choice of that of a fine and soft kind. A principle of economy, a desire to make this rude coat last as long as could be effected, would produce attention to the food and to the diseases of the animal, for it would soon be perceived that the adherence of the wool to the pelt was intimately connected with the health of the sheep. Many centuries would not pass without the discovery of
- “Uti “ Pellibus et spoliis corpus vestire ferarum.” — Lucretius, lib. v. 951. On the eastern coast of Tartary there is a tribe whose clothing is fish-skins, whence they derive their name Yupi, which signifies a “ fish-skin.”—Duhalde’s History of China, vol, iv. p. 148.
FELTING. 3
some means of changing the natural colour of the fleece, and then the art of dyeing would commence. ‘The improvement of the sheep may therefore be considered as having commenced even in these early times, and with this rude kind of clothing; although it would probably proceed slowly enough, and, after all, not be carried to any great extent.
OTHER ANIMALS DOMESTICATED.
The account of the posterity of Cain advances the history of the sheep another and an important step. It is said that “ Adah, the wife of Lamech,” one of the descendants of Cain, “ bare Jabal; he was the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle +.” The reader will observe here the use, for the first time, of the word cattle. It frequently occurs in the after-history of the Patriarchs. It is pleasing to connect with a descendant of Cain —Cain the fratricide—and as a proof that the curse did not rest for ever upon his offspring, the first mention of the domestication of other animals, almost as much connected as the sheep with the subsistence and the comfort of man.
THE FIRST WANDERING SHEPHERDS.
Jabal was “ the father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle ;” or, as it should have been rendered, “ Jabal was the father of those who dwell in tents with cattle.’ He commenced that wandering life in order to find pasture for his flocks which their increasing numbers probably now ren- dered necessary, which was afterwards pursued by Abraham and Isaac, and all the proprietors of numerous flocks in the East, and which the Arab and Tariarian shepherds continue to the present day. Jabal was the first
nomadic shepherd, about five hundred years before the flood.
THE FLEECE OF THE SHEEP MANUFACTURED INTO THE COVERING OF TENTS.
“ Jabal was the father of such as dwell in rents.” This is another extension of the use of the sheep: he furnished the antediluvians not merely with coverings for their bodies, but also for their moveable habi- tations. In what way this was managed the only authentic book of early record does not mention. The tents of the ancient shepherds, and even of those of modern times, are described as very differently constructed in dif- ferent countries and among different tribes. They are spoken of by some authors as consisting of skins sewn together, and by others as made of clotl:
manufactured by the process of felting. In later times they are said to ~ have been woven, the wool being spun and made into cloth by the wives and daughters of the inhabitants of these tents. Probably these were the three gradations. :
FELTING,
The skins of animals, whether domesticated or wild, were rudely sewn together in order to shelter the primitive Asiatic shepherds from the heat of the noonday sun, and from the intense cold of the night, each equally insupportable in that climate. It is, however, scarcely possible to suppose that sixteen hundred years (the interval between the creation and the deluge) could pass without the value and use of the wool, when detached from the pelt, being to a certain degree observed. Its property of matting together, and forming a compact mass on certain parts of the living ani- mal, would be first taken notice of ; and when these portions were separated from the fleece, curiosity or accident would discover that this process might
* Gen, iv, 20,
19 SHEEP.
be extended toa greater or less degree by beating, or by pressure, and that the wool would form a soft and pliable and warm substance, evidently fitted for human clothing, and far more comfortable, and more easily applicable to the wants of the individual and of society, than the skins that had been previously used. The felting property of wool would thus be developed ; and that rude species of manufacture, by means of which the fleece used to be converted into cloth, and is still so-in some of the less civilized ae of society, would be invented and improved to a very considerable egree,
THE FLESH OF THE SHEEP USED AS FOOD.
For nearly twelve hundred years longer, the early history of the Sheep can be traced in the Scriptures alone. The first passage that throws light upon it is the permission to use the flesh of animals as food, and which has already been hinted at. “ Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb,” as I formerly gave you the green herb, “ have I” now “ given you all things*.”
It does not, however, appear that, for a considerable period, full advan- tage was taken of this permission. The flesh of animals seems to have been first eaten at the periodical sacrifices that were offered to the Giver of all things. After that, animal food was considered as an occasional luxury, and as an indulgence not to be justified except on some particular occasionsf. It was long before the generality of persons could be brought to feed on the animals that they had domesticated,—that they had been in the habit of daily seeing and tending, and from which they had derived so much advantagef. The old custom of living on vegetables alone is retained in some parts of the East to the present day, and is considered by certain Indian castes as a religious duty. .
The animal which is the subject of the present history never seems to have been generally used for human food. Many of the wandering tribes preferred the flesh of the horse and of the camel to that of the sheep§ ; and even at this day the latter is comparatively disliked-in Spain |{—a prejudice exists against it in America—in no country does it appear to have been so universally adopted and so much relished as in Great Britain, and even there, it will hereafter be seen, that the liking is but of recent _ growth.
The following passage is found in Pliny (Secundus) $, and is thus trans- lated by old Philemon Holland :—« Sheepe likewise are in great request
* Gen. ix, 3. + Wilson’s Archeologia in doc.
+ Many more than a thousand years after this, the following opinions were prevalent, and almost assumed the authority of laws, among the most civilized and luxurious people of the world. ‘“ No one was to kill an ox which laboured at the plough,” (Ælian Var, Hist. lib. v. c. 14). “No one was to killa lamb or an ox under one year old,” (Athenzus, lib. i, and ix.; Eustathius in Iliad, &c.). And, honourable to the age and the country, “ No one was to hurt any living creature,” (Porphyr. de Abstinen. ; Hieronim, in Jovin, lib. ii.) The use of animal food was slowly and never universally established.—See also Robinson’s Archeologia Græca, pp. 118 and 496.
§ In anaccount of the Calmucs and Cossacs, drawn up by M. Polignac at the command of the reigning monarch in 1750, it is said of them,— The usual food of these Tartars is horse-flesh. Bread and mutton are reserved for the rich and wealthy burghers that live in their towns without ever taking the field. Their clothing is sheep-skins. In winter they wear the wool next tothem ; but in summer, or when it rains, they have the wool on the outside.”
|| Dr. Parry, the earliest and the latest advocate of the Merinos, acknowledges that the carcass of the sheep “is an object of little or no value in Spain, and that, except with the poorest people, it is not considered fit for food.”
' @ Lib. viii. c. 47,
DESCRIPTION OF THE ANCIENT PATRIARCHS. il
both in regard they serve as sacrifices to appease the Gods, and also by reason of their fleece yielding so profitable a use : for even as men are beholden to the bæœufe for their principal food and nourishment which they labour for, so they must acknowledge that they have their clothing and coverture for their bodies from the poore sheepe.”
A quotation from an old English poet shall close this account of the use of the sheep as food :—
“« Poore beast that for defense of man at first created wast, And in thy swelling udder bearst the iuyce of dainty tast; That with thy fleece keeps off the cold that would our limbs assaille, And rather with thy lyfe than with thy death doest us availe,”
It is somewhat singular that notwithstanding this seeming prejudice against the flesh of the sheep, all writers on diet have agreed in describing it as the most valuable of the articles of animal food. Pork may be more stimulating ; beef, perhaps, more nutritious when the digestive powers are strong: but, while there is in mutton sufficient nutriment, there is also that degree of consistency and readiness of assimilation which renders it most congenial to the human stomach, most easy of digestion, and most contributable to health. The flesh of the ram is tough—it has an unpleasant flavour, and is scarcely eatable; the meat of the ewe, and especially if she is not cast until she is old, may be somewhat hard and deficient in juice, » but a wether in his prime according to the breed, whether the present im- proved one that rarely lives beyond his second year, or a native of the heaths or the hills that does not arrive at perfection until he is four or five / years old, will afford a species of food unequalled in its grateful taste and” genuine wholesomeness. Of it almost alone can it be said, that it is our food in sickness as well as in health; its broth is the first thing that the invalid is permitted to taste, the first thing that he relishes, and is his natural preparation for a return to his common aliment*.
Although nothing can yet be asserted of the form and qualities of the primitive sheep, yet it is plain that from the moment of its being used for food its more rapid improvement must have commenced. If cultivated only for the wool, there would almost necessarily be that want of beauty and compactness, and profitableness of form, which in the case of the Merinos proved an insurmountable objection to the introduction, into a thickly populated country, of a sheep possessing the finest and the heaviest fleece, but failing in the production of animal food. If, on the other hand, the carcass occupied the whole of the attention of the shepherd, the wool would rapidly degenerate and become comparatively worthless. It is when the farmer has due regard to both of these essential properties of the sheep, that that animal can reach the degree of improvement of which nature has made it capable, and to which on British pastures it has arrived.
Lord Somerville has placed this in its proper point of view when he says that “ sheep are bountiful animals to man, for, let us blunder as we will, they feed us, clothe us, and can hardly, under any bad management, be kept with loss :” and he adds, that “ the breed of sheep, which on any given quantity of land will carry for a continuance the most wool as well us flesh, and both of the highest quality, is the breed to be preferred, or which has arrived nearest to perfection.”
DESCRIPTION OF THE ANCIENT PATRIARCHS,
Two hundred and sixty years now pass over before the mention of any thing occurs that has reference to the present inquiry; it is then (1921
* Brewster's Encyclopædia, art. ALIMENTS WS ?
aR PN a See
A AE A
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PANEPEN
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12 SHEEP.
B.c.) recorded that Abram and Lot came from Ur of the Chaldees, and Abram pitched his tent on * a mountain on the east of Bethel*.”” Thence he journeyed into Egypt, and he is said to have had “ sheep and oxen, and men servants and maid servants, and asses and camelst.” Returning towards Palestine he is described as being “ very rich in cattle, m silver, and in gold; and Lot also which went with Abram had flocks, and herds, and tents, and the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together},’—there was not sufficient pasture for the numerous flocks of both; whence arose “ strife between the herdmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdmen of Lot’s cattle§,” and these relatives and friends separated
- from each other, Lot journeying towards Sodom, and Abram taking his
course towards Canaan. After this Abram removed to the plain of Mamre, and there learning that his brother Lot had been attacked and made pri- soner by some of the chieftains of that country, “ he armed his trained servants,” trained for war, ‘ born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued” the spoilers and smote them, and rescued his bro- ther and all his property|.
THE PEREGRINATIONS OF THE ARABS.
These passages, written more than 3700 years ago, and which will be considered separately, present a singularly correct picture of the present mode of life of the Arabian and Tartar shepherds. Abraham and Lot are living in tents. The Chevalier d’Arvieux, who published an account of his travels in the East in the early part of the last century, and the fidelity of whose narrative has never been disputed, thus describes the Arabian shepherds :—“ These Arabs have no other lodging but their tents, which they call houses ; they are all black, of goat’s-hair canvass, and are stretched out in such a manner that the rain easily runs off without ever going through them. Their whole families, and all that they have in the world, even to the stables, are there, particularly in the winter. The tent of the Emir is of the same stuff, and differs only from those of his subjects in bigness.” > Abram pitched his tent on a mountain. D’Arvieux says that “ the Arabs commonly encamp on the top of some little hills, where there are no trees to hinder them from discovering a great way off all that come and go, that they may not be surprised, having nothing else to fear.”
- Abram is described by the sacred history as shifting his residence from place 40 place. D’Arvieux says that “ the Arabs set themselves down wherever they find springs of water, or rivulets in the valleys, and pasture for the subsistence of their cattle, and then decamp, as soon as that is gone, and go and post themselves in another place every fortnight, or at most every month. They live all the summer upon these hills, always advancing to- wards the north; and when winter begins to come in, they go by degrees towards the south, as far as Cæsarea of Palestine, and on the outside of the mountains of Carmel.”
A traveller thus describes the march of the modern Arabs :—“ Their wandering life, without ambition, brings to the mind of the traveller that of the ancient patriarchs, Nothing is more interesting than their manner of changing their abode. Numerous flocks, which precede the caravan, express, by their bleating, their joy at returning to their former pastures. Some beasts of burden, guided by the young men, bear the little ones Just dropped and not able to travel. Then come the camels, carrying the baggage
*. Gen, xii, 8. eee + Gen, xii. 16. t Gen. xiii. 2,5, 6. § Gen. xiii. 7. || Gen. xiv, 14, 16.
NUMEROUS FLOCKS, 13
and the old and sick women. The rest go on foot, carrying their infants at their backs or in their arms; and the men, mounted on their horses, armed with lances, ride around and bring up the march of the cattle which loiter behind, browsing as they slowly move on. In this manner they journey, and find their homes, their hearths, and their country in every place*,”
The weary Arabs roam from plain to plain,
Guiding the languid herd in quest of food,
And shift their little home’s uncertain scene,
With frequent farewell: strangers, pilgrims all, As were their fatherst.
NUMEROUS FLOCKS.
The sacred history goes on to state that “ the flocks and herds of Abraham and Lot were so great that the land was not able to bear them.” There was not sufficient pasture for the support of their united flocks. The Scriptures often speak of the immense flocks of sheep with which Palestine abounded, Job had 14,000 sheep, besides oxen and camels. The sheep always constituted by far the most numerous part of the shepherd’s pos- sessions. When 12,000 of the Israelites made an incursion into Midian, they brought away, besides other spoils, three score and twelve thousand beeves, and 675,000 sheep. When the tribes of Reuben and Gad made war with the Hagarites, they obtained as a booty 250,000 sheep§. The king of Moab rendered a yearly tribute of 200,000 sheep; and Solomon offered 120,000 sheep at the dedication of the Temple |j.
There are many circumstances which will readily account for these numerous flocks of sheep. ‘They were the chief possession,—the almost
only riches of the people: comparatively few of them were destroyed, for their flesh was rarely eaten, except on solemn sacrifices, or occasions of peculiar rejoicing , and there is reason to believe that the ewes had lambs twice in the year. The Jewish writers frequently speak of the first and second yeanings, referring the former to the month Nisan, corresponding to the March of the modern calendar; and the other to the month Tissi, answering to September. - The lambs of the two seasons were distinguished
* © After this horde I met with a smalier party, consisting of about a dozen families: they were approaching a beautiful little hollow, surrounded on three sides. by hills, and which they seemed to have chosen as the place of theirencampment. The sheik was the only one of the whole who rode. The rest of the men walked, as did most of the women. The boys drove the flocks of sheep and goats, and the little children the young lambs; the kids and the poultry were carried in panniers or baskets across the camels’ backs. ‘The tents, the cooking utensils, and the provisions and furniture were likewise laden upon these useful animals, As the camels halted every minute to pull a handful of leaves from the bushes, the progress of their march was very slow; but the patience of all seemed quite in harmony with the tardy movement of the camels, and it was evidently a matter of indifference to every one of the group whether they halted at noon or at sunset, for an hour was time enough to prepare their shelter for the night.” —Buckingham’s Travels in Palestine, p. 324.
“ It was entertaining enough to see the horde of Arabs decamp. First went the sheep and goats in regular divisions, then followed the camels and asses, loaded with the tents, furniture, and kitchen utensils. These were followed by the old men and the women, and the boys and girls on foot. The children that could not walk were carried on the backs of the young women, and the boys and girls; and the smallest of the lambs and kids were carried under the arms of the children. The procession was closed by the chief of the tribe mounted on the very best horse, andsurrounded by the heads of each family all on horses, with many servants on foot.”—Parson’s Travels from Aleppo to Bagdad, p. 109.
+ Dyer’s “ Fleece,” Book I. A
t Neambéte xxxi, 32, 33. § II, Chron, vii, 5, || I, Chron. v, 21.
BOA
SS
pep ena Poh gt
14 SHEEP,
by different names descriptive of their supposed qualities: the first were called keshorim, or bound, on account of their stronger-built or more com- pact frame; the second wetophim, or deficient, because they were feebler and of comparatively less value*.
These numerous flocks, however, were not confined to ancient times. Sir John Chardin had the opportunity of seeing a clan of Turcoman shep- herds in their march about two days’ distance from Aleppo. There were 400,000 beasts of carriage,—as camels, horses, oxen, cows, and asses ; and there were more than 3,000,000 of sheep and goats. Dr. Shaw states that several Arabian tribes who can bring no more than 300 or 400 horses into the field, are possessed of more than as many thousand camels and oxen, and treble the number of sheep and goats}. `
HOSPITALITY.
A circumstance, apparently trivial, is soon after recorded, and only men- tioned as showing the minute accuracy with which the historian has depicted this primitive shepherd. “As he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day, he saw three strangers approaching jf.” The following passage isa sufficient comment, It was the hottest part of the day of which the traveller speaks. “ We had in view several fine bays, and a plain full of booths, with the Turcomans sitting by the doors under sheds resembling porticoes, or made by shady trees, surrounded by flocks of goats §.” To entertain these travellers, Abram “took butter and milk, and the calf which he had dressed |,” and set it before them. It is merely observed at present, that this is the first time that any particular kind of animal food is spoken of; and that the word translated butter is some- times rendered fat, and, more frequently, cheese. The manufacture of cheese was indicated by the natural curdling of the milk,—and the mention of it occurs in profane history many centuries before butter was known, or at least spoken of, Both of them were composed principally, or almost entirely, of ewes’ and goats’ milk, mixed together except a small quantity, used only as a delicacy, and made from the milk of kine. It will here- after be shown from other passages, that the milk which was presented to the strangers was ewes’ milk; and which, in later times, was changed for that of camels q.
* There are several passages of Scripture which lead to the supposition that the Eastern sheep often produced two, and sometimes more than two lambs at a birth— Ps. cxliv. 13; Solomon’s Song, iv. 2. Sir Thomas Browne observes, in his Miscel- laneous Tracts, “ that the sheep of Palestine must not he judged of by ours, for they were abundantly more prolific.” Bochart has proved this fact, vol. ii. p. 432,510. See also Burder’s Oriental Literature, vol. ii. p. 56.
+ Shaw’s Travels, ii. p. 125. t Gen. xviii. 1, 2.
ò Chandler’s Travels in Asia Minor, p. 180. {| Gen. xviii. 8.
@ Burckhardt affords an excellent commentary on this. ‘ 4yesh (flour and sour camel’s milk) is the usual and universal dish with the Aeneses, and even the richest sheik would think it a shame for his wife to dress any other dish merely to please his own palate, For a common guest bread is boiled and served up with the ayesh; but for a guest of rank a kid or a lamb is killed. They boil it with bourgal (wheat boiled in some leaven and then dried in the sun) and serve it in a wooden dish, round the edges of which the meat is arranged. A wooden bowl containing the melted grease of the animal (often called butter, or camel’s grease, and- which is kept in goat skins, and used as butter) is pressed down in the midst of the bourgal, and every morsel is dipped into the grease before it is swallowed.”—Page 35.
Buckingham also, in his ‘ Notes on Palestine,’ well illustrates the conduct of Abram to these strangers. “A poor man, if he is hospitable, always kills a lamb when a stranger arrives, gives coffee to all the guests present, holds his bag of tobacco always ready to supply the pipes of his friends, and sacrifices his last penny to honour his guest,
WELLS. lé
WELLS.
In the deserts of Arabia, and even in the plains of Judea, water was es- sential, not only to the comfort and thriving of the flock, but to its very existence; and one of the most important duties of the shepherd was to enable the sheep occasionally to quench their thirst. It was rare that the flowing stream was met with in these sandy regions; natural pools of water were almost as unfrequent, and a drought of no long duration would cause them to disappear*, To prevent disappointments of this kind, the shepherds, with immense labour, dug wells at their usual resting-places, and at other spots in the intermediate distance ;
“ The ancient wells, deep sunk with toil immense,
Toil of the Patriarchs, with sublime intent,
Themselves and long posterity to serve +.” These, however, in process of time, decayed, or were choked with sand, or they were wilfully filled by a vindictive enemy; or the struggle to procure water from them, between the herdsmen belonging to different masters, was productive of quarrels and bloodshed. To prevent these evils, certain usages were gradually established, and acknowledged and respected by all the neighbouring herdsmen, except those who were perfectly Jawless..
It was because Abraham had suffered from some of these inconveniences, and particularly the petty warfare which existed between his herdsmen and those of Abimelech, king of the Philistines, that the following transaction took place. Abraham, after presenting Abimelech with some sheep and oxen, in token of the cessation of their quarrel, ‘‘ set seven ewe-lambs of the flock by themselves. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe-lambs which thou hast set by themselves? And he said, For these seven ewe-lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me that I have digged this well f.”
Abraham effected a regular and freehold purchase of the well and the ground in which it was dug at the price of these seven ewe-lambs. They were the money which he paid for this spot of ground; or “ they were that commodity of known value and general demand which stood in the stead of money,” proving how universally they had spread, and how generally their value was acknowledged §.
or relieve those who want. In his common living the richest sheik does not differ from the meanest of his tribe. They eat every day of the same dish, and never partake of any luxury, except on the arrival of a stranger, when the tent of the host is open to all his friends.’—Page 4i.
* M.de Brisson, in the History of his Captivity among the Arabs, describes the drought which occasionally prevails. “The end of the year was now approaching, and a single drop of rain had not yet fallen. The plains and the valleys were entirely burnt up; nothing remained for the nourishment of the flocks, and the month of December had arrived, when the rains generally ceased until the next October. The desolation was universal, when an Arab from a distant part of the country came to inform us that abundant showers had refreshed the earth in some remote districts. Upon the news, joy succeeded to fear and grief—every one struck his tent, and set out for the regions that had been lately watered.” —p. 37.
Even in the more temperate clime of Britain, sheep have often severely suffered from want of water. The summer of 1803 was unusually sultry and dry. “ A flock of sheep at Pevensey, consisting of 300, being driven to a pond, after long thirst, drank so immo- derately that more than a hundred of them died.” —Annual Register, 1803.
+ Dyer's Fleece, Book I.
t Gen. xxi. 27—31. i é :
ò “ Wealth used to be estimated by the number and quality of the cattle. They were the principal instruments of commerce. Thus we read in Homer of a cauldron being worth twenty sheep, and a goblet worth twelve lambs, &c. These animils were the means by which exchange or commerce was originally carried on, The proof of this is convincing enough, as well as very singular. The word which signifies the exchange of
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16 SHEEP,
JACOB AND LABAN,
A hundréd years elapse before the scriptural history of the sheep is resumed, Jacob had escaped from the justly merited anger of his brother Esau, and had travelled eastward until he arrived at Haran*, where his uncle Laban had at that time pitched his tents. As he halted by a covered well, Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban, came to water her father’s sheep. She is the first shepherdess of whom mention is made in ancient history, and her name, which signified a sheep, was characteristic of her occupation.
THE FLOCKS TENDED BY WOMEN,
This meeting of the cousins presents another picture of these early times. Rachel, the daughter of a man of some substance in that part of the country, tends her father’s flock + ; and Jacob, the son of a shepherd- prince, rolls away the stone from the well, and afterwards becomes servant to her father for her sake. It is precisely in keeping with the accounts of profane authors some centuries afterwards, when the daughters of nobles and princes are represented as employed at home in weaving garments for the family, or looking after the flocks abroad, and feeding the horses, and fetching water from the fountains.
THE FIRST GREAT IMPROVEMENT OF THE SHEEP.
“« Jacob served Laban seven years for the sake of Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had to her ;” and then, being deceived by her father, he served for her yet another seven long years : at the expiration of that time, Laban offering him no wages, he was naturally anxious to return to his father. Laban, however, who was conscious that much of the prosperity that had lately attended him was attributable to the skilful and faithful service of his son-in-law, entreated him to remain, and Jacob consented on certain strange conditions. The wording of the com- mon translation is not a little obscure t ; but the meaning, as understood hy the parties, was this: that in future, the speckled or ring-streaked sheep and goats—exceptions to the general colour, a brown or dingy black—the sportings rather than the regular productions of nature—should be con- sidered as the wages of Jacob. These could hitherto have been very few, or the selfish and avaricious father-in-law would not have consented to the
one kind of goods for another is derived from the Greek word for a damb, agvuecas, from wevos. A wealthy person is called ‘aman of many lambs,’ and two rival brothers are represented by Hesiod as fighting about the ‘sheep,’ that is, the property of their father.” —Hunter’s Sacred Biography, Abraham.
* Gen sai Ts
+ In the descriptions already given of the marches of the horde, they have been seen toiling on foot with their children at their backs, and the younger girls taking the prin- cipal share in carrying the infants or the lambs. Burckhardt shall illustrate their employment when the tribe has arrived at its resting-place: “ Among the Arabs of Sinai it is an established rule that neither the men nor the boys should ever drive the cattle to the pasture. A boy would feel insulted if any one were to say, ‘Go and drive your father’s sheep to pasture ;’ these words would in his opinion signify, ‘You are no better than a girl? This is the exclusive duty of the unmarried girls of the camp, who perform it by turns. Thus early accustomed to such fatiguing duties, the Sinai women are as hardy as the men. I have seen these females roaming bare-footed over sharp rocks, where I, well shod, could with difficulty step along. During the whole day they continue ex- posed to the sun, carefully watching the sheep, for they are sure to be severely beaten by their father should any be lost.”—Notes on the Bedouins. Their brothers or their fathers had indeed the grace to relieve them from their post when the day was passed, and the wild beasts of those uncultivated regions began to be in motion.
$ Gen, xxx, 32,
6
a co pa na
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= a Prea pneg aenean.
THE FIRST GREAT IMPROVEMENT OF THE SHEEP. 17
proposal. The bargain was struck, and all the parti-coloured cattle were separated from the rest, and driven away to a distance of three days’ jour- ney, and put under the care of Laban’s sons, so that there could be no imposition or dishonesty ; and the sheep of a uniform colour were left with Jacob.
He had probably witnessed the power of imagination at the moment of the female’s conception, and had thought that he might turn this, and not dishonestly, to his advantage, for the compact between them was sufficiently plain: “ Jacob therefore took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut-tree, and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods, and he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering-troughs, when” (at the time of the unrolling of the stone, a work of labour, and therefore done as seldom as possible) ‘all the flocks, male and female, came to drink * H and they generally coupled before the watering-troughs, and with these straked and pilled rods before them. When by these means some speckled or ring-straked lambs had dropped, he placed them in the sight of the other ewes— he set the faces of the flocks towards the ring-straked,” in order that they might produce the like.
It was only when the stronger sheep, those of the first yeaning, were in season, that he resorted to this expedient; the autumnal and weaker cattle were suffered to take their course. The consequence was, that either from the power of imagination in the mother, carried to an extent the like of which is certainly not seen at the present day, or from some superior over-ruling agency, the flock generally “ brought forth cattle, ring-straked, speckled, and spotted? The whole story would induce the belief that some superior power aided the ingenuity of the servant, and rewarded his fourteen years’ fidelity to an ungenerous and avaricious master ¢.
Laban was, as might be expected, very much dissatisfied, and altered, unjustly altered, the wages of his servant. He limited this change of colour to one kind alone. First he said that the speckled only should belong to Jacob. Perhaps he might have seen or heard of the pilled rods, and ima- gined that he should thus thwart the stratagem of his servant ; but either speckled rods were substituted for those that had been pilled in the form of rings, or this superior agency continued to influence the breeding of the cattle—the lambs were all speckled. Again he affirmed that the bargain extended to the ring-straked alone, and the lambs then were dropped ring- straked; and so in process of time “ the cattle were taken away from Laban and given to him, and the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and maid-servants, and man-servants, and camels and asses te? During the whole transaction, although Jacob did not immediately separate the parti-coloured lambs from their mothers, for a reason that has just been hinted at, yet he continued to breed from those of one uniform colour,
THE PROGRESS OF THE IMPROVEMENT.
This is the first intelligence which the Scriptures afford of the kind of sheep in these early times, or at least of those of which these flocks were composed : they were of one uniform colour, brown or dingy black, and the exceptions
* Gen. xxx. 37, 38. ; 3 48
+ Michaelis observes on this passage, that “ even in later times a similar method is adopted in order to obtain a similar result, something white being placed in the water- troughs before the sheep, or white cloths hung upin the fold; and even the water-troughs have been made of perfectly white stone, in order that white lambs might be produced.” —In loc,
t Gen, xxxi, 8, 9, and xxx, 43.
C
18 THE SHEEP.
were accidental and few in number. From the experiment or policy of Jacob, sheep of a new colour arose: they formed his numerous flock when he quitted the service of Laban; some of them afterwards mingled with the herds of Esau; they were probably continued among the descendants of Jacob, and the better appearance of the fleece, and the more varied and useful purposes to which it might be devoted, would lead to a selection from those that had the most white about them, until at length the fleece was purely white. It had become so in the time of David, who likens it to snow*; and Solomon speaks of the teeth of his mistress, as resembling
„a flock of sheep just come up from the washing +.
Mr. Luccock, whose researches into everything connected with wool are exceedingly valuable, clearly traces the present colour of the fleece to these proceedings of Jacob. He says that “this new variety of flocks soon established itself in the country where it was produced, and gradually dif- fused itself southward as far as the desert of Arabia, so that in the space of 300 (600) years its whiteness had become proverbial }.”
_~ Some of the best principles of breeding must have been steadily and long pursued before this could have been effected; and probably in this, as in many other particulars, the ancients have not been far exceeded by the moderns in scientific and useful pursuits
In the desert, where the numbers of the inhabitants were fewer, and their association with each other less frequent, the change was more slowly effected, or rather, has not been perfectly accomplished at the present day. The Arabs are true to the customs and prejudices of their ancestors more than 2000 years ago.
Mr. Luccock states, that “ this alteration in the colour of wool evidently took the line of the richest soils, and spread its influence more readily through countries where the arts of husbandry had made the greatest progress, and but seldom passed their boundaries. From Persia, descend- ing the Euphrates, and passing over the richer countries of Syria, it reached the borders of the Nile §.” In this direction we are enabled satisfactorily to trace it, when, some centuries afterwards, the records of general history are joined to those of the Scriptures,
Northward, too, it began to spread; it ascended on either bank of the Euphrates, until it arrived at those of the Phasis, and diffused itself over the fertile country that lay at the feet of the mountains of Colchis, now Mingrelia and Georgia. There it seems peculiarly to have established itself, and, more than five centuries afterwards, its reputation had reached Greece. The leading men of the infant states of Greece united together,
~and, under some false or frivolous pretext, invaded Colchis, defeated and slew its king, and carried away the Golden Fleece. This was a prize not valuable, as some have feigned, on account of the particles of gold which, brought down by the torrents from Mount Caucasus towards the banks of the Euxine, were collected in the fleeces of sheep that were sunk in the streams in order to receive them |j, but from its own intrinsic excellence ; and it has ever been, and will continue to be, a mine of gold to every country in which it is found, and its worth duly estimated.
The foundation of the splendour of the Grecian republics was laid by the celebrated Argonautic expedition ; and in the course of this treatise, the progress and the beneficial results of the breeding of sheep and the manufacture of wool will be traced through many a country in the eastern
* Psalm exlvii. 16. + Solomon’s Song, iv. 2. t Essay on Wool, p. 30,
§ Ib. p.31.
|| Strabo, lib. xii. p. 199. Appian says, that Pompey, after the defeat of Mithridates was an eye-witness of this fact, P:
THE ORIGINAL BREED HORNED. 19
and western worlds. Inthe meantime the memory of Jacob will be respected, not only from its connexion with sacred story, but because he was the first recorded improver of the sheep, and his improvement has survived the wreck of ages, and will never be surpassed. The superior cheerfulness which sheep and goats with white fleeces communicated to rural scenery, the cleanliness which wool of that description was calculated to promote when used as an article of furniture or of dress, and, above all, the greater variety and vividness of the artificial tints with which it might be imbued, conspired from the beginning, to render it more valuable, and, in every age, more sedulously cultivated than that of a dark or black hue.
Nature, however, although controlled, cannot be pcrfectly subdued. In some justly esteemed breeds of sheep we see traces of their original descent. Although, on the southern downs, that which was most valuable in the improvement of colour is retained, yet the muzzle and the legs betray the character of the early progenitors. In the Norfolks this is more decidedly / seen; and now and then a perfectly black sheep betrays, in a manner not / to be mistaken, the native hue, and the still lurking primitive tendency. | Even where the fleece has, by diligent cultivation, been brought to the | ` purest white, a dusky or a black lamb will occasionally display the colour, |
if not the other lineaments of the first parents. i
The master and the servant, the father and the son-in-law, could not long remain together while the prosperity of the one was daily increasing, and the sources of wealth proportionably diminishing with the other ; and accord- ingly it is said, that “ Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and behold, it was not toward him as before:” and fearing, from the character of the man, and the too frequent practices of the times, that treachery or violence would soon be resorted to, he took advantage of Laban’s absence, and fled towards his native land. The news was quickly conveyed to the father-in- law, who pursued the fugitive, and overtook him before he could reach the tents of Isaac. The explanation which took place throws still further light on the management of the sheep in those days.
After this the Bible contains only incidental mention of the sheep, its produce, and the treatment to which it was subjected. Patches of infor- mation scattered in various parts of the volume must be compared together, in order to obtain any satisfactory notion of the true character of the hus- bandry of the times. It will therefore be advantageous no longer to follow precisely the order of events, but to bring into one point of view the infor- mation which the Scriptures afford, connecting with this the few gleanings that can be collected from profane history, the earliest authentic records of which do not, however, commence until many centuries after the time
of Jacob.
‘THE ORIGINAL BREED HORNED.
The primitive breed was certainly horned, and those horns were of con- siderable size. When Abraham, in obedience to the Divine command, was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, his arm was arrested by a voice from heaven, “ and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind hima ram caught ina thicket by his horns *,” The trumpets used in war were made of rams’ horns f. The polled sheep were probably an accidental variety ; and when first occurring, cultivated partly for their singularity, and more for their utility, whether with reference to the additional closeness of folding of which they were capable, or the fewer accidents that were likely to occur, or, most of all, from the superior docility and quietness of those
* Gen, xxii. 13. + Joshua vie 6. Cc 4a
20 SHEEP.
to whom nature had not given these weapons of offence, and of the use of which all animals soon become too conscious. There is not, however, a polled breed of the present day in which lambs are not occasionally dropped with the rudiments of horns: some of these horns grow to their full size, and others are curiously attached to the skin alone, and either hang loosely down, or drop off.
‘
THE ORIGINAL BREED.
From very early times two breeds of sheep have inhabited the countries over which the patriarchal shepherds roamed, and have spread themselves through the neighbouring districts. One has, as its principal characteristic, a lengthened tail, with an accumulation of fat around the superior part of it, These sheep have been found in Arabia and Syria, but most numerous in the interior, and in the southern part of Africa ; and constituting the only native breed of these latter regions. The others have an accumulation of fat commencing at the posterior part of the loins, swelling gradually into a considerable mass towards the rump, and presenting behind two enlarge- ments of a more or less globular form. This kind of sheep is scarcely known in Africa, but it covers both the north and the south of Asia; it prevails far more than the other in Palestine; it reaches even to the in- terior, and the northern part of Russia; and it is the kind of sheep of which the flocks of the Kalmucks and the Turcomans, and indeed of almost all the wandering hordes of shepherds are, to the present day, composed.
[ Fat-rumped Sheep.]
The reader is here presented with a cut of it as it exists at the present day in the north-eastern part of Europe, through the whole of the temperate regions of Asia, and to a greater_or less degree from the Baltic Sea to the North Pacific Ocean*. It is purest in the deserts of Great Tartary, and influenced in its form only by pasturage, soil, and climate; no other
variety being near to contaminate its blood. The following is Dr. Ander son’s account of this breed; not so precise, indeed, as could be wished, but sufficiently satisfactory.
* See Pallas’s Travels in Russia, and particularly Anderson on the Russian Sheep, p, 26
THE PRESENT TARTARIAN SHEEP. 21
“ The flocks of all the Tartar hordes resemble one another, by having a large yellowish muzzle, the under jaw often projecting beyond the upper; by long hanging ears, and by the horns of the adult ram being large, spiral, wrinkled, angular, or bent in a lunar form. They have slender legs in proportion to their bodies, a high chest, large hanging testicles, and tolerably fine wool mixed with hair. The body of the ram, and some- times of the ewe, swells gradually with fat towards the posteriors, where a solid mass of fat is formed on the rump, and falls over the anus in place of a tail, divided into two hemispheres, which take the form of the hips, with a little button of a tail in the middle to be felt with the finger.”
The admirers of some of the improved breeds of sheep will find great fault with the large and heavy head; the comparatively thin neck, and especially at the base, where it proceeds from the chest; the depth and want of substance from the withers to the elbow; the deficiency of brisket, its place being supplied by a kind of dewlap; the want of depth imme- diately behind the elbow ; the tendency to belly posteriorly ; the length of the legs; the gauntness and muscularity compared with the roundness and compactness of some modern breeds: but it cannot be denied, that, con- sidering it as belonging to the wandering shepherds, as traversing a vast extent of country, and subject to want and to drought, and to the vicissitudes of the seasons, it is not badly adapted to the situation in which it is found, and there are evident capabilities of improvement, when chance, or the progress of civilization, may give opportunity for its development.
THE PRESENT TARTARIAN SHEEP.
The flocks of all the Tartar hordes have much résemblance to each other; but climate, soil, &c., produce some small difference in them, whether reared by the Tartars, or by the Russians, in the western deserts of Great Tartary, from the river Volga to the Irtish and the Altaic chain of mountains. In all that tract of country the pasturage abounds with acrid and liliacious plants in spring; while in summer, at least in the open spots where sheep delight to feed, beside the common grasses, bitter and aromatic plants, wormwood, camphorosna, and many species of salt- wort abounding in juices and salts are also found.
These sneep, liberally fed at first with the mother’s milk, and afterwards traversing a rapid succession of saline and abundant pasture, attain a very considerable size. They often weigh more than 200 lbs., and may be con- sidered as the largest of the unimproved sheep; of which weight the soft oily fat alone that forms on the rump amounts to from 20 to 40 Ibs. * The Uropygium, or fat rump, which is made up of this oily species of fat, is so large as to incommode the animal in walking ; but when the same Sheep are carried into the interior parts of Russia, the tail loses half its size and weight, nay sometimes more than that, from a change in their food and mode of life +.
On the banks of the Volga below Lamara these saline pastures are
* The following is a description of one of these Steatopyga, or fat-ramped Kirguise rams, and that not of the largest size :— Head rather less than many others of the same variety, and all black, even to the horns. Ears pendent and black, except the outer rim, which was spotted with white, as were the legs. Throat covered with greyish hair, the rest of the animal white. Horns spiral. Uropygium (fat-rump ) very large, and divided into two hemispheres. Anus filled with fat, or rather stuffed with it in all parts. Scrotum covered with hair. Prepuce large. Wool coarse, and some inches long on the back, sides, and extremities ; while it is mixed every where with hair,
“ Total weight of the ram before cut up or skinned, 193 lbs, ; the fat of the uropygium and anus 38 lbs.’—Anderson, p. dl.
Tt Anderson, p. 31.
22 SHEEP.
wanting’: the snow likewise lies deep during the greater part of the winter, often causing a destructive scarcity of food among those who make no provision for a future day. The same kind of sheep prevail there ; but they are diminished in size, and the fat rump is more than propor- tionably lessened, and even the horns are frequently wanting. On the Janisey they are considerably less. In other parts of these Tartarian re- gions, where the pasture is abundant but there is no saline impregnation, sheep of a size occasionally exceeding that of the Kirguise are found ; but the excrescence on the rump is much smaller, and rarely greater than that which is found on the corresponding parts of some of the improved British breeds when fatted to excess. `
A very intelligent writer gives a similar description of the Kerguise, or Kerguise and Kalmuckian sheep. In the mountainous districts “* they are higher than a new-born calf, and so strong and heavy that the full grown ones weigh between four and five poods. In shape they resemble the Indian sheep. They have the arched front of the old battering-ram, prominent under lips and large pendulous ears. Instead of a tail, they have a monstrous round of fat like a cushion, weighing 30 or 40 lbs., and yielding between 20 and 30|bs. of tallow. Their wool is coarse, entangled together, and strongly mixed with hair. The rams are universally, and the wethers generally, horned; and some, like the Icelandic, have four, five, or six horns. During the whole winter they seek their fodder under the snow, without losing their condition by it. To this the shortness of the season much contributes, as well as the circumstance that the snow passes away more rapidly on the salt parts of the steeps ; and all animals are fattened by feeding on the vegetables of a saline soil. ;
« So rich is the country with sheep, that common Tartars often possess a thousand, and some of the richer ones more than fifty thousand.
“ The Kalmuckian sheep differ from the Kirguise in their smaller size, less curved forehead, lesser although pendulous ears, less hairy wool, and being seldom horned. They are sadly neglected; indeed it is in a manner impossible to compel the Kalmucks to be good agriculturists *.”
In the neighbourhood of Caucasus and Taurida, the hind-quarters of the sheep are salted as hams, and sent in great quantities to the northern pro- vinces of Turkey. In the south-east of European Russia, and particularly in the government of Kazan, the wool of the sheep is particularly fine, and almost without any mixture of hair; but, generally speaking, it is coarse, and used only for inferior cloths; but the greater part of the cloths of this description used in Russia are imported. Much of this coarse Russian wool is imported. It is used in the manufacture of carpets, and the list of some cloths is made of it. The present mode of dressing cloths
cannot be fully effected except the list is made considerably stronger than
the body of the cloth. Low foreign wools are used for this purpose, because they are stronger, and can be procured at less price. Some very fine wool is imported from the south of Russia, and especially from the port of Odessa. The Russian wool is usually very clean and white. It probably is not washed on the back of the animal, but after it is shorn.
THE POLLED FAT-RUMPED SHEEP.
‘A breed of fat-rumped sheep prevails in Persia, Anthony Jenkinson, ` in his Travels from Moscow to Khorasan, in the 16th century, thus speaks of them :—“ The people have great store of cattel, as camels, horses, and sheep, both tame and wild. Their sheep are of great stature, with large buttocks weighing 60 or 80 lbs. in weight +.
æ Agricultural Magazine, Dec., 1804. + Hackluyt’s Collection, vol. i, p. 329,
THE PERSIAN RAM.
[ The Persian Ram. }
This cut contains the portrait of a Persian ram, belonging to the Zoolo- gical Society of Lendon. It is not of the enormous size just spoken of, but gives a fair representation of the hornless, fat-rumped sheep of the east. The wool, although short, and somewhat curled, is coarse and hairy, This is a fault, however, which, with due care, might probably be removed in the course of a few generations. The level back and belly, the rounded car- cass, and the light small leg, would induce the easy belief that from such animal our down and mountain sheep might originally have sprung. There is no irreconcileable difference of form: the only peculiarity is the en- larged buttock. Difference of pasture and of climate might materially effect that; or, what is much more probable, skilful selection and breeding might convert the disposition to accumulate fat on a particular part into a tendency to acquire general good condition *.
The broad or fat-tailed sheep are probably varieties of the fat-rumped ones, and will be presently described.
Are there any passages of Scripture which indicate that this breed of sheep, which now mostly prevails in Palestine, and forms the flock of the wandering shepherd there, is the same with that of which the sacred his- torians often speak ? There are passages which seem to have a singular and satisfactory reference to these distinguishing characters of the eastern sheep of the present day.
* Fraser, in his Travels through Khorassan, gives a very sufficient reason why the Persian sheep-owner should be somewhat careless about the improvement of his flock, at least in the neighbourhood of royalty. He says—“ The Persian king is a good shot, and delights to shoot at a mark}; but he also loves to make his amusement profitable. The mark commonly made use of is a live sheep, near which stands a fwrosh ready to tell the success of the shot, and to dispatch the animal, if only wounded. When his majesty is ready to shoot, he challenges his courtiers about him to bet with him about the shot, and it would be the height of rudeness and impolicy to refuse, The king’s game, however, is sure; for whether he strikes the animal or not, the furosh, who has had his lesson, and whose property the carcass is to be, rushes on it the moment the shot comes, with a ‘Mash Allah!’ (bravo), knocks it down, and cuts its throat; and no one, of course, can question the author of its fate. These sheep are always the property of some villager or farmer near the place, and are never paid for by his majesty.”
pe a. Ta TUA ie an E ae jani A AN RR = ee ae a ci = rein ale ree Soe a Sa a a
SHEEP,
FURTHER PROOF OF THE PATRIARCHAL BREED.
The Israelites, at first in conformity with the custom of their forefathers, and afterwards by Divine command, offered in sacrifice different animals, as an acknowledgment of gratitude to that Being from whom they derived every good. Sometimes the whole animal was burned; at other times the fat, or the fattest part, was selected, whether because it was the most delicate and valuable part of the animal *, or that it would most readily take fire, and diffuse itself in the air, and rise a grateful offering to Him who was sup- posed to inhabit the heavens. The book of Leviticus arranges the form and ceremony which was to accompany these offerings. First, it describes the manner in which they were consecrated to their office who were to conduct and preside over these sacrifices. Aaron was brought before the altar, and the ‘“ ram of consecration” was led out and slain. And Moses ** took the fat, and the rump, and all the fat that was upon the mwards,” and “ burnt them on the “altar upon the burnt-offering t.” Aaron, after his consecration, makes the first offerings for himself and the people ; and when every thing is prepared, the burnt-offering is placed upon the altar, and Aaron “ did wash,” cleanse from blood, “ the inwards and the legs, and burnt them upon the burnt-offering upon the altar +.”
* The substance which was accumulated on the rumps of these sheep, and formed the broad part of the tail in other sheep, consisted more of the nature of marrow than of fat, and was esteemed one of the greatest delicacies that could be presented at the table. Its almost semi-fluid character is very evident in the Persian sheep belonging to the Zoolo- gical Society of London.
+ Leviticus viii. 25, 28.
$ Leviticus ix. 14. The question whether the different varieties of the same species
of animal have been produced by accidental deviations from one original parent breed, or whether there may not have been, from the beginning, several varieties of the same species, endowed with different qualities, and instincts, and propensities, adapting them to the situation in which they are found, is one of considerable interest to the zoologist, but with which the breeder of any species of animal has little to do. It is also a question difficult to solve—it is one that does not admit of demonstrative proof either the one_way or the other, aud on which it does not become the candid inquirer to speak positively and with arrogance. : :
These observations are induced by the careless and presumptuous way in which almost every natural historian at once settles the matter. He does not seem to admit of any doubt respecting the affair, but at once assumes it as a certainty that every species of animal was derived from one original parent, and sets himself to work to inquire which was the parent breed, and, worse than all, derives many fanciful, nay, even some practi- cal conclusions from that which rests at best only on probability. Thus there is scarcely a writer on sheep who does not take the question at once for granted, and describe the Argali, or the Musmon, or some creature of his own imagination, as the
„common origin of all. {There is no doubt that one variety of domesticated animals, if prevented from mixing | with any other, will in general propagate the same kind without any material change. lt is also acknowledged that if, from some unknown or accidental cause, an individual is produced, possessing some unusual peculiarities, his progeny, to a certain degree, will probably possess the same peculiarities ; and if a male and a female are selected with these peculiarities, and care is afterwards taken to exclude all who have them ‘not, a new and permanent breed may be established. It is likewise sufficiently clear, that climate, soil, and pasture will gradually effect a considerable change in the form and the quality both of the wool and the flesh of every breed. These changes, however, have their limits; they go no farther than producing modifications of the former breed: the essential and distinguishing character may yet be recognised, or, if it should be rendered somewhat obscure, it will burst forth again when the animal regains his native soil and climate. The question is, when there are varieties of a species essentially and altogether different from eachother ; when the act of man has and could have little to do in effecting such a diference; when there was nothing to prevent that intercourse which would soon wear down and efface every accidental variety, and restore the primitive character—the question then is, whether these variations are not best explained on the supposition of an original adaptation of each to the situation in which it was placed, and the functions it was to perfurm.—Sce Price on Sheep, p. 14.
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PRIMITIVE SHEEP. 25
There is reason to suppose that the breed of sheep which the Israclites tended on their departure from Egypt was essentially the same as that which Abraham possessed and Jacob improved; and these were clearly, \ by comparison of the two passages just quoted from Leviticus, the sheep ` whose fat was principally deposited, not on the tail, but on the rump, or on the upper part of the legs as connected with, and forming a part of, the rump.
CAUSE OF THIS PECULIARITY.
Dr. Pallas has some curious speculations concerning this Uropygium, or fatty excrescence. Without once inquiring into the actual origin of this sheep, he traces the peculiarity of the rump to “ the bitter saline pastures of Tartary, by the influence of which it has gradually augmented in size through a number of generations, like some diseases ; insomuch, that the tail has gradually decayed and dwindled away to the little button we find remaining, suffocated, in a manner, by fat, as parts of the human body have been found decayed and diminished in certain cases of unnatural accumulation of fat.”” He also says, that the diminution of thismass of fat in the sheep of several of the Tartar hordes is owing to the little worm- wood there is in those districts, and the small quantity of salt with which the pasture is impregnated.” And he says, that “ when these sheep are transported into the south of Siberia, where the pasture is nearly the same as that on which the Kirguise sheep range, the uropygium shrinks to a very diminutive size.”
Certainly, as Dr. Anderson well remarks, this is opening a new and very important question—one that comes home to the business and bosom of the breeder, ‘There is proof enough with regard to every breed, that by luxuriant pasture an animal, and the descendants of that animal, may be forced up far beyond their original size; but is it possible, by dint of pasture, to Increase or diminish the bulk of a particular part of the animal, his general frame being at the same time comparatively unaffected? The changes which pasture, accident, different systems of breeding, will speedily produce in the animal generally, and which will soon taint or improve the whole flock, may be easily conceived,—of the changes which disease may effect in any particular organ, or part of the frame, there are abundant proofs, and also of the hereditary character of these transformations. The condition and health and size of the animal may be influenced, and that part on which the fat is especially disposed to accumulate may appear to be more affected than any other; but this is not the question here—the condition and health and size remaining the same, can the comparative bulk of any particular limb or organ be influenced? Certainly by breed- \ ing—certainly by remembering the golden rule, that like produces like; / but permanently in no other way *. oS
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PRIMITIVE SHEEP.
It has already been shown that the sheep-husbandry of the primitive ages was exceedingly simple. It consisted in a continual change of pasture, in a direction, as much as could be contrived, towards the north from winter to summer, and towards the south from summer to winter, and the contriving to pitch the temporary encampment near to some rivulet or well, whence water might be obtained for domestic purposes, and also for the flocks, which could not subsist on the products of a soil generally impregnated with saline matter, without a plentiful supply of this fluid. The driving of the flock to and from the water was the duty of the female part of the family _ or horde, and often the attending to the sheep during the day, in order to
* See this question treated more at length in Anderson on Sheep, p. 35, &e.
26 THE SHEEP.
prevent their straying too far from the tents. The shepherd, however, (who was either the head of the family, or his son, or some confidential servant,) was at hand in cases of difficulty or danger ; and, when night came on, the sheep were driven to the immediate neighbourhood of the encampment, or enclosed in a fold, and he lay in the midst of them or close by them either in a temporary hut, or exposed to the cold of those regions, more chilling than the heat of the day was oppressive. Jacob expresses in strong terms the occasional sufferings of the shepherd in the discharge of this part of his duty—* In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes *.”
WANT OF WATER.
The occasional suffering from drought has been already hinted at. A traveller gives, from his own experience, an account of the torture that is felt when the water is exhausted on one of the sandy deserts of Africa, “ Many perish victims of the most horrible thirst. It is then that the value of a cup of water is really felt. In such cases there is no distinction : if the master has none, the servant will not give it to him, for very few are the instances in which a man will voluntarily lose his life to save that of another. What a situation for a man—a rich one—perhaps the owner of caravans! He is dying for a drop of water, no one gives it to him; he offers all he possesses, no one hears him; they are all dying, though by walking a few hours further they might be saved. The camels are lying down, and cannot be made to rise; no one has strength to walk; only he who has a glass of that precious liquid lives to walk a mile farther, and then perhaps dies too, If voyages on seas are dangerous, so are those on land. At sea, one meets with pirates—they rob, we surrender or die; in the desert, they rob the traveller of his property and water ; they let him live perhaps, but what a life! to die the most barbarous and agonizing of all deaths. In short, to be thirsty in a desert, without water, exposed to a burning sun, without shelter, and no hopes of finding either, is the most terrible situation a man can be placed in, and I believe one of the greatest suffering that a human being can sustain. The eyes grow inflamed, the tongue and lips swell, a hollow sound is heard in the ears which is followed by deafness; the brains seem to grow thick, the sufferer is beside himself— mad; all these feelings arise from the want of a little water; and in the midst of this misery the deceitful mirages appear to him. A broad expanse of water, clear as crystal, suddenly opens to his view. Faint and weary under the fierce sunbeam, he gazes on the unexpected relief with ineffable delight, and fondly anticipates a speedy termination to his present distress. He sees the foremost cattle enter the lake, and the water dashed about by their feet. He quickens his pace and hastens to the spot, when to his utter disappointment the pool disappears, and nothing remains but the dry and thirsty wilderness +.” The reader will hereafter enter into the full force of what is meant by the ‘ diving,’ the real fountains of water, said in the Scrip- tures to be prepared for his flock by the great Shepherd.
COLD.
In Europe, the days and nights seem to correspond naturally with the seasons and with each other: but it is quite otherwise in the East. In Lower Asia, in particular, the day is always hot, and as soon as the sun is fifteen degrees above the horizon, no cold is felt even in the depth of winter. On the contrary, in the height of summer. the nights are intensely cold, and the better sort of the inhabitants are all clothed in furred garments, as the only means by which they can resist the chilliness of the air, A
* Gen. xxxi, 40, + Belzoni’s Researches in Egypt, p, 342,
ANCIENT DOGS. 27
traveller says, “* sometimes we lay at night out in the open air, sooner than enter a town, on which occasions I found the weather as piercing cold as it was distressingly hot in the day time *.”
WILD BEASTS,
Every portion of the country which they traversed was probably as much infested with wild beasts at that period as at the present day, or even more so, for fewer caravans then crossed the desert to disturb or destroy these unpleasant inhabitants, Jacob refers to them, and to the ravages which they committed— That which was torn of beasts I brought not unto thee ; I bare the loss of itt.” David also draws a lively picture of the danger to which the shepherd was exposed from this cause—‘ Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion and a bear and took a lamb out of the flock, and I went after him, (each of them in his turn), and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth, and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him, thy servant slew both the lion and the bear ł.” So, many centuries afterwards, our Saviour speaks of the hireling fleeing and leaving the sheep when he saw the wolf coming, and of the good shepherd giving his life for the sheep§.
The following passage from Haynes’s Travels gives a dreadful acccunt of the present state of a portion of the country over which the flocks of the Patriarchs periodically ranged ; and the reader may form some idea of the dangers to which the ancient shepherd was occasionally exposed. “ The approaching to Lene at close of day, as we did, is at once terrifying and dangerous. The surrounding country swarms with wild beasts, such as tigers, leopards, and jackals, whose cries and howlings would strike the boldest traveller, who has not been frequently in a like situation, with the
deepest sense of horror |j.
THE ANCIENT DOG.
It would seem in early times, as now, the shepherd had his attendant dog. Job speaks of those “ whose fathers he would have disdained to have set with the dogs of his flock q ;” and Isaiah calls upon “ the beasts of the forest to come to devour, for the shepherds cannot understand, the watch- men are blind, and they are all dumb dogs that cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber**,” ‘The duty of the dog, however, extended no further than guarding the flock from the attack of wild beasts: and, like the Spanish sheep-dog of the present day, he had nothing to do with the management of the sheep: on the contrary, he was a kind of abomination with the Israelites, and if not carefully watched, was more destructive to the sheep than the beast of whose approach he was to give warning. Taken away from this duty, he was a common pest and destroyer. The Psalmist refers to this when he speaks of dogs having compassed him aboutt; and it is remarkable that there is not an encomium passed upon the dog: in the whole of the sacred volumett.
* Sir John Chardin’s Travels. See also Burden’s Observations on Gen. xxxi., 40,
+ Gen: xxxi. 39. t 1 Sam. xvii. 34—36. § John x. 12.
\| Harmer’s Observations, vol. iv. p. 171. € Job xxx. 1,
** Isaiah lvi. 9, 11. +} Ps. xvii. 16.
tt“ The dog loses in Barbary, as inthe East in general, a part of those social qualities which make him the friend of man. He is no longer that domestic, mild, insinuating animal, faithfully attached to his master, and ever ready to defend him, even at the expense of his own life. Among the Arabs, he is cruel, blood-thirsty, always hungry, and never satisfied. His look is savage, his physiognomy ignoble, and his appearance disagreeable, The Moors grant him indeed a corner in their tent, but that is all. They never caress him, never throw him anything to eat, To this treatment, in my opinion,
SHEEP,
THE SHEPHERD'S COMMAND OVER HIS FLOCK.
Not possessing the assistance which the modern shepherd in enclosed countries derives from his intelligent and faithful dog, the keeper of the sheep, both in ancient and modern times, thrown upon his own resources, acquired a command over his flock which would be deemed almost incre. dible. Our Saviour, when delineating his own character, gives an in- teresting picture of the Jewish shepherd. “The sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out, and he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice*.” In a wild and boundless desert, and without his quadruped helper, it was neces- sary that he should have this command over them ; and he acquired it by being always among them, and by treating them- kindly. Ina country enclosed according to the modern system, and where there are laws to restrain the plunderer, the shepherd may safely leave his sheep by night as well as by day. On our most extensive downs and wildest mountains he depends chiefly on the exertions of his dog to keep the sheep from wandering, to collect them at even, and to drive them to the fold. The eastern shepherd can only accomplish his task by exercising another kind of power over his flock, namely, that of attachment and confidence t.
“I asked my man,” says Mr. Hartley, who was travelling through Greece, “if it was customary to give names to sheep. He informed me that it was, and that the sheep obeyed their shepherd when he called them by their name. This morning I had an opportunity of verifying the truth of his account. Passing a flock of sheep, I asked the shepherd the same question that I had put to my servant, and he gave me the same answer. I then bade him to call one of his sheep. He did so, and it instantly left its pasture and its companions and ran up to the hands of the shepherd with signs of pleasure, and with a prompt obedience which I had never seen excelled in any other animal. He told me, also, that many of his sheep were still € wild,’ —that they had not yet learned their names,—but that by teaching they would all learn them. The others which knew their names he called ‘ tame f.’ ” ;
This, perhaps, is a portion of sheep-management somewhat too much neglected. Why not give names to all the sheep, as well as to the prize must the indifference of dogs towards their master be ascribed. Very often they have not any master. They choose a tent as a place of refuge; they remain there, and no further notice is taken of them. Refuse carrion, filth, anything is good enough for them if they can but appease their hunger. They are lean and emaciated, and have searcely any belly. They seldom bite one another; but they unite against a stranger who ap- proaches the Arab tents, furiously attack him, and would tear him to pieces if he did not seek safety in flight from this starved troop. If any person were unable to defend himself, or had the misfortune to fall, he would be in danger of being devoured, for these dogs are very greedy after human flesh.’’—Poiret’s Travels in Barbary, vol. i. p. 253. :
“ During all the long tour through this dreary and melancholy city (Alexandria in Egypt), Europe and its liveliness were pictured to me only by the bustle and activity of the sparrows. I here no longer recognised the dog, that friend of man, the attached and faithful companion, the lively and honest courtier; he is here a gloomy egotist, unknown to the host under whose roof he dwells, cut off from human intercourse, without being the less a slave; he does not know him whose house he protects, and devours his corpse with- out repugnance.”—Denon’s Travels in Lower Egypt, p. 32.
£ sonn x, 3, 4,
+ Our sheepe do not follow their shepherds as they do in all other countries ; for the shepherd goeth before and the sheep follow like a pack of dogs. This disobedience of our sheepe happens to us, because we let them range night and day in the field without a shepherd, which other countries dare not for feare of wolves and other ravenous beasts, but are compélled to guard them all day with great dogs, and to bring them home at night, or to watch them in their folds —Samuel Hartlib’s Legacie, 1651,
Wet ee : $ The Rev. John Hartley’s Journal, Penny Magazine. Oct 13 1832.
THE SHEPHERD’S COMMAND OVER HIS FLOCK. 29
ones and the bullocks? The English shepherd professes to recognize every sheep in his flock, almost as well as the huntsman knows every dog in his pack. The latter has long been accustomed to give to each hound his name, and much of the tractability and obedience of the pack depends on each individual of it recognizing first his peculiar name, and, very soon after- wards, the command, or encouragement, or intimation of displeasure that is addressed to him, This mutual recognition between the shepherd and his charge did not, perhaps, extend to every individual, and could not, if the flock was as numerous as it is described to have occasionally been in ancient times; but he selected some of the older rams whom, by feeding from the hand and other kind treatment, he accustomed to come at his call, and gradually to understand and obey his directions, and whom the rest of the flock woull immediately follow *. By degrees these selected animals would perfectly understand the language or gestures of the shepherd, and at his command, and sometimes of their own accord, would collect the strag- glers, and marshal them in regular order, and direct the march of the flock.
Lucian speaks of Polyphemus, the first shepherd of whose management of his sheep profane history gives any account, as ordering the ram what things he ought to do.
Homer compares Ulysses drawing up his men to a ram ordering his
flock— From rank to rank he moves and orders all: A stately ram thus measures o’er the ground, And, master of the flock, surveys them round. Porr’s TRANSLATION}.
* There is no animal in which the principle of imitation is so strong as in the sheep. It seems to have been wisely and kindly implanted in one of the most valuable and defenceless and wandering of the domesticated animals, in order that it might be ob- served and taken advantage of by the intelligence of man. The leaders of the flock having been instructed and rendered manageable, the obedience of the rest is secured, It is often exceedingly difficult to drive a parcel of sheep into a narrow and unaccustomed passage or way, but if one of them is dragged even with violence into the place, the rest follow without the slightest trouble. x
Mr. Wilson quotes from Dr. Anderson a ludicrous illustration of this principle :— A butcher’s boy was driving some fat wethers through Liverpool, but they ran down a street along which he did not want them to go. He observed a scavenger at work with his broom a little way before him, and called out loudly to him to stop the sheep. The man accordingly did what he could to turn them back, running from side to side, always opposing himself to their passage, and brandishing his broom with great dexterity, but the sheep, much agitated, pressed forward. At last one of them came right up to the man, who, fearing it was about to jump right over his head while he was stooping, grasped the short broomstick in both hands, and held it over his head. He stood for a few seconds in this position, when the sheep made a spring and jumped fairly over him without touch- ing the broom. The first had no sooner cleared this impediment than another followed, and another, in such quick succession, that the man, perfectly confounded, seemed to lose all recollection, and stood in the same attitude till the whole had jumped over him, not one of them attempting to pass on either side, though the street was quite clear. As this took place during wet weather, the man was entirely bespattered over with dirt before they had all passed, and it is impossible to conceive a more ludicrous appearance than the pvor fellow made on the occasion.” —Illustrations of Natural History, vol. i. p. 112. l
The Annual Register for 1808 affords two illustrations of this principle, of a very dif- ferent character. “A few days since a serious accident happened to a flock of sheep, the property of Mr. Cooper, of Huilston Hall, who had intrusted them to the care of a boy for that day, in the absence of the shepherd, who was assisting in getting in the harvest. About the middle of the day the sheep broke from their pasture, when the thoughtless boy hastened them back again over a narrow and deep ditch. The leading sheep fell in, and the remainder passing over them, smothered twenty-five sheep and forty lambs, the whole being worth 70/. or 802” It is stated in the same volume that “ Mr, Sparks, near Guildford, had more than eight hundred sheep in one pasture field, when being frightened by a dog, one of them jumped into an adjoining field, which Was on a great descent, and then followed each other over the gap of the hedge so fast, that one hundred and twenty- three of them were killed.”
+ Even at the present day, and where the use of the sheep-dog is known, Daubenton,
THE SHEEP,
THE MUSIC OF THE SHEPHERDS,
Ancient writers describe-the shepherds of the early times as exerting con- siderable influence over their flocks by the power of musie. Orpheus was a shepherd, and strange is the account of the magic of his pipe. Apollo, during nine years, kept the flocks of Admetus, and his rival, Pan, was also a shepherd, and, although easily vanquished when he ventured to contend with the god of music, discoursed eloquently upon the pipe. David was laken from the sheep of his father Jesse, and made the armour-bearer of Saul; and “ when the evil spirit, the fit of melancholy, was upon Saul, David took a harp and played with his hand, and Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him*,” i
The pastures on which the sheep of the olden times fed, consisted of immense plains, or occasionally of abrupt alternations of hill and vale, with many a tangled copse and forest, so that the sheep, or a portion of them; were often out of the sight of the keeper, and occasionally beyond the reach of his voice: he therefore had a horn, or pipe, by means of which he could be heard at a greater distance, and the well-known sound of which the leaders of the flock would immediately obey. To while away the time, he would, perhaps, occasionally endeavour to draw other and more pleasing sounds from this instrument so necessary to his vocation, and thus he would naturally, or almost necessarily, become, to a greater or less degree, a musician : therefore the interesting stories of the poets are not all fictions ; and it can easily be imagined that the shepherd would often be found playing on his pipe in the midst of his flock, and they apparently attentive
to, and pleased with, the strain, for they would have suficient intelligence to associate with it a sense of the kindness and protection they experienced from the player.
Goldsmith gives the following account of the shepherd-musician :— “ Before I had seen them trained in this manner, I had no conception of those descriptions in the old pastoral poets, of the shepherd leading: his flock from one country to another. As I had been used to see these harmless creatures driven before their keepers, I supposed that all the rest was pure invention ; but in many parts of the Alps, and eyen some provinces of France, the shepherd and his pipe are still continued with true antique simplicity. The flock is regularly penned every evening, to preserve them from the wolf, and the shepherd returns homeward at sunset with his sheep following him, and seemingly pleased with the sound of the pipe, which is blown with a reed, and resembles the chanter of a bagpipe.”
Some illustrations of the command of the shepherd over his flock will be given when the management of the Spanish flocks in their annual peregrinations is described; one pleasing instance of it, however, the sheep-husbandry of Messrs. Nowlan, of Kilkenny, will afford. Their stock in 1820 consisted of 600 pure Merinos. During the summer they were pastured upon a farm of good natural herbage improved by grass- seeds and clover; in winter they were housed in the day during wet
thus describes the duty and the practice of the French shepherds. “ They select certain sheep from the flock; they give them particular names, and teach them to come when they are called. In order to accustom them to this, they make the sheep follow them by offering them a piece of bread. When the shepherd wishes to lead his flock through a defile, or to make them change the direction in which they are proceeding, he calls to him one of these selected sheep. Those that are nearest to him immediately follow, and the others are not far behind, and so by degrees the whole flock is disposed to obey the call of the shepherd, and to follow him.’—Instructiuns pour les Bergers, p. 15. * 1] Sam. xvi. 14-23. ' Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, vol, ii, p 59.
THE MUSIC OF THE SHEPHERDS. 31 weather. They were all under the charge of one young man. No dog was permitted, all was done by the shepherd himself. At the sound of the horn all the sheep flocked around him if he stopped, and followed him if he moved forward. Salt was the medium by which this docility was chiefly produced, and the reporter adds, —“ any shepherd who accustoms his sheep to the use of salt, and carries a little about him as a reward for their attention to his call, will be followed by them wherever he pleases to lead the way.”
The farm is divided by the King’s River, at times so rapid and im- petuous as not to be fordable by the strongest horse. A plank bridge, about eighteen inches wide, and one hundred and ten feet long, with a head-rail on one side, is thrown across for the convenience of passengers. When it is necessary to move the sheep from one side of the river to the other, the shepherd has only to cross this plank, sounding his horn, and each individual of the flock paces regularly after him in single file, with- out any instance of casualty, even at the time of the highest floods*.”
This kind of sheep-management is not, however, to be expected in the present day, nor could it be made compatible with the altered and improved state of British husbandry; but there are several passages in the older writers on agriculture, which abundantly prove that this part at least of the patriarchal system was not unknown by the British shepherds. Barnaby Googe, who wrote in 1614, and from whom some excellent maxims will be occasionally quoted, thus expresses himself,—there is, perhaps, a little of the romance of the pastoral life of former times about it, but it was well founded on the habits of the animal, and the customs of the times. «c Moreover, the shepherds must deale gently and lovingly with their flocke, and comforting and cheering them with singing and musicke, for this kind of cattel taketh great delighte in musicke, and it doth them as much good as their pasture. Beside, they must be well ware in the driving ‘of them and ruling of them, that they guide them with their voice, and shaking of their staffe, and not hunting of them t.”
THE HUMANITY OF THE SHEPHERD.
Connected with this is another interesting feature in the character of the nomadic shepherd—humanity. Their frequent change of situation in search
* The Farmer’s Magazine, August, 1820. ‘The use of the horn for the collecting and management of sheep was well known in early times. Polybius says that the flocks in the island of Cyrnon, on the landing of any stranger, always fled into the interior of the country, but when the shepherd blew his horn, they scampered around him and forgot all fear—See also Bulkeley’s Notes on John x. 4.
Other domesticated animals have been taught the same obedience to the herdsmen. “ In Lithuania and Muscovy, as soon as the sun has risen, the herdsman daily winds his horn. On the well-known signal, the stalls being instantly opened, the horses, mules, asses, goats, heifers, and bulls obey the signal withont reluctance. As soon as they are assembled in a body, he marches at the head of them, while they quietly follow their leader into such meadows as he sees most convenient for them. By a second signal they are led to water, and, by a third, re-conducted home again, where each repairs to his own proper stall without the least disorder or confusion.’”—Nature Delineated, vol. iii. pe 25.
ne The shepherds in Sweden, as well as in Iceland, have horns made of birchwood. Two excavated pieces of birchwood are fitted together, and bound tightly round with the bark of the same tree, so that one circular pipe is formed. The sound made by this horn is shrill, but not unpleasant. The sheep and cattle will come together at certain places and times obedient to this call.”
It is in the same manner that the cattle are collected by the herdsmen of the Alps— Acerbi’s Travels in Sweden and Lapland, vol. i. p. 30.
+ Dyer, in his “Fleece,” speaking of the “airy downs and gentle hills,” the open and elevated country, where this system of management might be with most advantage
32 SHEEP,
of pasture and of water, and the long marches which they were sometimes obliged to take when many of the lambs were newly dropped, or the ewes were big with young, compelled them to adopt a system of attention and kindness to their flocks, which, not being required from the modern shepherd, is not- practised or understood by him. Thus Jacob addresses Esau—“ My Lord knoweth that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me; and if men should overdrive them one day, all the flock will die*.” Thus the prophet speaks of the Messiah— “ He shall feed his flock like a ehepherd ; he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and shall carry them in kis bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” In the descriptions already quoted of the manner in which encampments of the shepherds are moved, provision is always made for the young lambs. “ Some beasts of burden, guided by the young men, bear the little ones just dropped, and not able to travelt.” & The little children, just able to toddle along themselves, are employed in driving, at their own slow pace, the lambs a little oldert.” “ One evening,” says M. de Brisson, in his history of his captivity among the Arabs, “as I was returning with our flock, one of the ewes brought forth a lamb on the declivity of a little hill; I took it up in my arms, and, with equal care and tenderness, hasted to carry it to the tents.”—P, 37.
In flowery spring-time, when the new-dropped lamb, Tottering with weakness by its mother’s side, Feels the fresh world about him, and each thorn, Hillock, or furrow, trips his feeble feet,— Oh, guard him carefully! §”
Sir John Chardin, undesignedly, gives a satisfactory comment on Jacob’s apology to Esau for not attending him on his journey. ‘ Their (the Arabs’) flocks feed down the place of their encampment so quick, by the great numbers which they have, that tliey are obliged to remove them too often, which is very destructive to the flocks, on account of the young ones which have not strength enough to follow Rete
The parable of Nathan describes the fondness for animals, and the care
adopted, and describing the usual healthiness of the sheep in such situations, says, that the
3 “ Nor of halt,
Hydropic tumours, nor of rot, complain ;
Evils deformed and foul; nor with hoarse cough Disturb the music of the pastoral pipe;
But crowding to the noże, with silence, soft,
The close-woven carpet graze.” —Book I.
Ellis, in his “ Shepherd’s Guide,” quoting from an old French author, says, “ He must accustom himself to two sorts of cries, the one pleasant and shrill, to make them go for- ward ; but another and diverse ery to call them back, that the sheep, hearing these two different cries, may learn and apply themselves to do that which thereby is commanded them. He must sometimes make them merry, cheering them up with songs or else by his whistle and pipe, for the sheep at the hearing thereof will feed the more hungerly : they will not straggle so far abroad, but they will love him the better,” « Hence it is, I suppose,” Ellis adds, “that some shepherds divert themselves with playing on the tabor and pipe, as some do at this time in England, and as they did in France when this French author wrote.”—P. 3.
The same quaint but valuable writer describes a person who lived in the neighbourhood of Hempstead in 1747, that was remarkable for the loudness of his whistle, and who was called “the Whistling Shepherd.” “ He had by means of it a perfect command of his dog, who left off driving the flock, or a single sheep, and came to him at once from a considerable distance, and who had equal command over his sheep ; for as soon as he appeared at the end of the field or the common, and gave the usual signal, although scattered widely apart, they would immediately form into a close compact body and march towards him,”—P, 63,
* Gen. xxxili. 13. $ Buckineham’s Palestine.
t Buckingham’s Palestine, § Dyer's Fleece, Book Is
|] See also Harmer’s Observations, vol. i. p. 126,
SHEEP-SHEARING. 33 x
bestowed on them occasionally exhibited by the people of that time. It was evidently a picture of home life. ‘ There were two men in one city, the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe-lamb, which he had bought and nourished up, and it grew up together with him and with his children: it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter *.”
SHEEP-SHEARING,
At what period the grand improvement in the management of the sheep, the periodical separation of the wool from the pelt—the shearing— was introduced, is not known. It had probably been observed that in most cli- mates in which there is considerable difference of temperature between the winter and the summer, the fleece is naturally detached during the latter season. As the spring advances, it is no longer needed to defend the animal from the cold—it has become, from its weight and its warmth, a nuisance rather than a comfort—the supply of nutriment is therefore cut off at the base, the bulb whence it sprung withers away, its attachment to the skin ceases, and it is only held on the back of the animal by the inter- lacing and entanglement of its fibres. Portions of it are now torn off by every thicket, and become lost or spoiled. The ingenuity of the sheep- owner would be exercised in saving as much of the wool as he could. He would watch the time when it was beginning to be thrown off, and he would endeavour to hasten the natural process. The earliest and rudest method was to drive the flocks hastily through a narrow passage, when by their pressure against each other the greater part of the fleece was loosened, or completely detached.
To this succeeded another mode, which had an appearance of inhumanity about it. ‘The sheep was caught and the fleece was pulled from its back, The animal, however, did not often experience much pain in this o peration, for when the fleece began to be so loosely attached to the pelt that it was separated by almost everything against which it rubbed, no great force was needed to separate it entirely +.
Of one of the varieties of the sheep of the patriarche—the Persian—it is reported that when they feed upon the new grass between January and May, the whole of their fleeces drop off as it were spontaneously, and the animals are left ‘as bare ” (in the elegant language of the author, Yarren- ton) “as a scalded sucking-pig t.” There is no proof, however, that this was the case with the ancient Persian sheep, much less that it could be affirmed of the flocks of the patriarchs generally The shepherd watched the time when the outer layer of wool began to separate, and being assured from long experience that it was usually about the same season of the year, a happy thought suggested the use of the shears, in order to secure the whole of the fleece in its most perfect state.
_* 2 Sam, xii, 1, 2, 3. Bochart gives several ill.strations of their humanity to animata. Hieron., p. i. lib. ii. ch. 43. : ;
+ If Mr. Low’s account, however, is to be credited, too much cruelty does sometimes accompany this method of obtaining the fleece. He thus describes the practice which prevailed in the Orkney Islands in his time. “ About midsummer there is a particular day published for rowing, when all the men in the parish attend with their dogs, turn out and drive the whole flock, without any preparation of washing, into narrow pens, and from thence I may say to the place of execution, where the wool is torn off their backs; an operation which brings their whole blood into their skin, and is not only disgusting, but, if the season proves harsh, is the cause of great destruction. But, however cruel it may scem, it is almost the only notice that is taken of these useful animals by their unfeeling masters until that time twelvemonth.”-—Fauna Orcadensis, p.7. In Iceland, also, the sheep are never shorn, but the wool is pulled off by the hand when it has become loose.—Gill’s Technological Repository, vol. ii p. 18.
t Agricyltural Magazine, July, 18% ¢
34 SHEEP,
Most of those who have treated on the early history of this animal have traced the practice of sheep-shearing to the time of Hesiod. By hin, in fact, it is first mentioned as having been common among the Greeks, but the sacred writings prove that it was of much earlier date. Eighteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, and nine hundred before the time of Hesiod, is it recorded that “ Laban went to shear his sheep*.”
These wandering shepherds, however inferior they might have been to other nations in many of the arts of civilized life, far excelled them in the management and care of these useful animals. When Rome was founded, two hundred years after the time of Hesiod, the custom of pulling instead of shearing off the wool prevailed. The word vellus, a fleece, was derived from the pulling or tearing away of the wool; and the part of the Palatine Hill called Velleia was so named on account of its being the spot where the Romans used to pull their wool, before the Etruscan method of shearing was introduced. When Rome was in the zenith of her glory, the more effectual and humane operation of shearing was not universally adopted in Italy. Pliny expressly says, “the sheep are not everywhere shorn, but the custom of pulling off the wool (vellendi mos) continues in some places ;” and he adds, that which was a disgrace to the age, “ that the poor animals were kept fasting three days before the ‘ pulling,’ in order that, the sheep being thus rendered languid and exhausted, the roots of the wool might be more easily detached.” How superior to the conquerors of the world do the patriarchs appear in the noblest art, that of humanity +!
It was not every where in the eastern countries that convenience could be found for the washing, which then, as in most places now, preceded the shearing; and Laban was compelled to drive his flock to a considerable distance for this purpose; it was not until “the third day ” that “ it was
told Laban that Jacob had fled f.”
Of the preparation for, and the manner in which the operation was per- formed, it could not be expected that these early records would speak ; but there can be no doubt that when sheep were so numerous, and formed so con- siderable a part of the riches of the owner, every convenience would be pro- vided for the occasion: accordingly a building seems to have been erected
for this especial purpose. Jehu “slew the brethren of Ahaziah at the pit of the shearing-house§.” This was nearly nine hundred years after that change of colour in the sheep, first introduced by Jacob, which rendered “ the pit of the shearing-house,” the pool in which the sheep were washed previous to the shearing, absolutely necessary.
Then, as now, the sheep-shearing was the season of peculiar rejoicing. It was the harvest of the shepherd, and when he had gathered it, a good feeling taught him, as it has taught the agriculturist in every country and time, to make glad the hearts of the labourers for a few hours at least. Even churlish Nabal could not refuse this, for he asks of the servants of David, “ Shall I take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my ‘shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be?” Ata little later period another, but not very pleasing, account is given of the festivities of that season: ‘‘ And it came to pass that Absalom had sheep- shearers in Baal-hazor, and Absalom invited all the king’s sons, and Absalom commanded his servants, saying, When Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, then kill him ||.”
* Gen. xxxi. 19
+ See Wilson on the Sheep. Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 365.
t Gen. XXXI. 22. § 2 Kings x. 13-14. oa ANS
|; 2 Sam. xxiii. 23,28, The close of harvest was a season of rejoicing in most of the ancient nations, and sheep-shearing was the harvest of the nomadic shepherd. This
periodical festival was even enacted by law. Cecrops, the founder of the kingdom of Athens, about the time of Moses, ordained that “the master of every family should after
-
SHEEP-SHEARING. 35
Without entering at present into the question relating to hogget-wool, or the period of the first clipping of the lamb, it may be mentioned that there is a passage in Deuteronomy which may account for the origin of the delay of the first shearing. It has principal reference, however, only to the firstlings or the first born of the flock, which were claimed for reli- gious purposes. “ All the firstling males that come of thy herd, and of thy flock, thou shalt sanctify unto the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work with the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep*.”
One passage more with reference to the shearing of the sheep will place the docility of that animal, and the humanity of the shepherd, in a very pleasing point of view: it is the account given by the prophet Isaiah of the sufferings of the Messiah, and the meekness with which he endured them. ‘“‘ He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a,sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth +.” He who has witnessed only the noise, and confusion, and frequent brutality of a modern sheep- shearing, can with difficulty picture to himself quietude in the sheep so complete as this. One, however, who witnessed the management of the sheep in Palestine, a philosopher, a Jew, without direct reference to this pas- sage, and without seeming to have it in his mind, gives a perfect commen- tary on it, ‘* Woolly rams laden with thick fleeces put themselves into his hands (the shepherd’s) to have their wool shorn, being thus accustomed to pay their yearly tribute to man, their king by nature. The sheep stands in a silent mclining posture, unconstrained under the hand of the shearer. These things may appear strange to those who do not know the docility of the sheep, and shepherds might be much assisted in this government by giving them names while in the state of lambs, and using them to go and come daily by those names}.”
There are not any passages which indicate that the Israelite shepherds were in the habit of clothing their sheep after the shearing, There is no reason to suppose that these animals ever became so excessively fat as to render it necessary for them to be shorn in an early period of the season, and thus be exposed to danger from the cold: and then only could clothing be justified on account of the expense with which it is attended, whatever may be said of its effect on the sheep and the wool§.
It is certain, however, that the Greeks were accustomed to clothe their flocks. “ Pursuing our walk,” (in the neighbourhood of Athens,) says the pretended but highly instructive Anacharsis, “we passed by a numerous flock of sheep, preceded and followed by dogs to drive away the wolves (Xen. Memor. lib. ii. p. 757) : a covering of skin was wrapped round each sheep. This practice, which has been borrowed from the Megareans (in- habitants of the Isthmus of Corinth, Lus. in Areopag. p. 136 and 143), defends the wool from the filth which might otherwise defile it, and prevents it from being torn by the hedges. I know not whether it contributes to render the wool finer, but I can affirm that the wool of Attica is extremely fine |.” (Varr. de Re Rustica, lib. ii. c. 2.)
The system of cotting was known and adopted by the Israelites. After repelling the invasion of Sennacherib, Hezekiah applied a portion of the spoil to works of public utility; he built “storehouses, for the increase of
harvest make a feast for his servants, and eat together with those who had taken pains together with him in tilling his ground.” See Burder’s Oriental Literature, vol. ii, p.77. * Deut. xv. 19. + Isaiah liii. 7. : 1 t Philo-Judæus on the Creation, c. 1. $ Young’s Annals of Agriculture, vol. xli. p. 515. — | ravels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece, vol, iv. p. 519,
36 SHEEP.
corn, and wine, and oil, and stalls for all manner of beasts, and cotes for flocks*.”’ This has reference more to the inhabitants of considerable towns or cities than to the wandering shepherds, of whom principally mention has hitherto been made.
A very curious, but not accurate, account of the earliest system of cot- ting is given by a writer in the Annals of Agriculture. He says that “the ancients were so perfectly satisfied that a variety of climate was absolutely necessary to the production of fine wool, that those people whose situation admitted not of any change, had recourse to art,—housing them from the day to defend them from the too powerful rays of the sun, and exposing them to the cold of night. This was practised by Hezekiah ; Columella informs us that the same conveniences were adopted in Greece and Tarentum, and there is a line in Milton’s Lycidas confirming the custom of their nocturnal exposure :— à
‘ Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night? ”
The cotting which has been practised in modern times, however, has had universally reference to the night. The sheep are collected together in these buildings for the double purpose of defending them from the cold, and preserving their dung as manure; and, from the accounts which are given of the sheep-husbandry of the remotest times, it is clear that these were the objects of the primitive shepherds. Polyphemus is represented by Homer as driving his flock at eve to his rude cote, a rocky cave ț. Virgil expressly describes the cote as designed to “ fend the bitter cold, and pre- vent the diseases produced by it $.” The same poet furnishes a satis- factory explanation of Milton’s dews of night, when, not having the modern fear of the early dew before his eyes, he counsels,—
“ Before the sun, while Hesperus appears,
First let them sip from herbs the pearly tears Of morning dew §.”
They were to “ batten on the fresh dews of night” before these were eva- porated by the rising sun; and Columella himself speaks of ‘ the folds not being resorted to on account of the great number of wolves,—the hurdles of which they were composed affording a very insufficient protec- tion from these animals,—but, in order that their dung might be saved, buildings were erected into which they were driven every night all the year round ||.”
WEAVING,
Of the use of the wool for clothing, in those early times, the scriptures afford many unequivocal proofs. Job, who is supposed to have lived
* 2 Chron. xxxii. 28. + Odyssey, lib. ix. + Incipiens stabulis edico in mollibus herbam Carpere oves, dum mox frondosa reducitur estas : Et multa duram stipula, filicumque maniplis Sternere subter humum, glacies ne frigida ledat Molle pecus, scabiemque ferat, turpesque podagras.—Georg. III, v. 293. First with assiduous care from winter keep Well foddered in the stalls thy tender sheep. Then spread with straw the bedding of thy fold, With fern beneath, to fend the bitter cold. That free from gout thou may’st preserve thy care, __And clear from scabs produced by freezing air,—Dryden. Georgie IIT. i Bradley ’s Synopsis of Columella, &c., p. 59.
WEAVING, 37
before the escape of the Israelites from Egypt, says, “ Let me be con- demned if I have seen any perish for want of clothin g, or any poor with- out covering ; if his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep*”: ¿. e. if his loins did not admonish him to bless me when he felt himself warm by the clothing made from my wool. Woollen cloths, then, furnished a part of the usual dress. But might not this cloth have been produced by the first and rudest process of manufacture,—the beating and compressing of the wool together,—and by means of which the fibres were entangled and adhered, and a coarse, yet comfortable kind of cloth, was made? The same book will settle this question, Job is complaining of his sad estate, and fancies himself near unto death, and he says, ‘ My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle t”; swifter than its motion through the warp that is stretched across the machine. This affords an unequivocal proof that the art of weaving was then known.
A comparison with other passages will show that this art. was in no rude state, and therefore, probably, was of no recent invention; for, in order to repress that pride in gaudy apparel which is the foible of every age, the Jews are forbidden to wear clothes made of two different materials, as linen and wool interwoven f. The skill of the manufac- turer is also spoken of in very high terms. Moses alludes to those whom “ God had filled with wisdom of art (all human acquirements are naturally traced to Him by whom the spirit of intelligence was originally bestowed) to work all manner of work of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer in blue and in purple, in scarlet and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of those that devise cunning work §”
It will now be natural to look back to the history of Joseph, three hundred years before the escape of the Israelites from Egypt, and inquire whether the coat of many colours with which a fond and foolish father decorated a favourite son, was not likewise a proof that the art of weaving woollen cloth then existed, and, even among the wandering shepherds, had attained a considerable degree of perfection. It is at least a proof that the art of dyeing was known and commonly practised.
Very early in the history of the Twelve Tribes after their settlement in Canaan mention is made of the employment of the women in weaving. When Samson slept in the lap of Delilah, she was busily employed in using his hair as the warp of her loom
“ If,” said he to his false mistress, “ thou weavest seven locks of my head with the web, I shall be in thy power. And she did so; and she fastened it with the pin, and said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson, And he awaked out of his sleep and went away with the pin of the beam, and with the web ||.”
A short time after the period in which Samson lived, it is recorded that the mother of Samuel “ made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year,” when she came up with her husband to offer yearly sacrifices. And, at a somewhat later period], Solomon thus describes the good wife,—‘* She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She perceiveth that her merchandise is good. Her household are clothed with scarlet **.”
* Job xxxi. 20, + Ib. vii. 6. t Deut. xxii. 11 § Exod. XXXV, 85. \| Judges xvi. 14. 1 J Sam. ii, 19,
** Proverbs xxxi. 13, 18, 21,
SHEEP.
THE EARLY SHEPHERDS THE INVENTORS OF WEAVING.
Moses legislated some centuries before the golden fleece arrived in Greece ; and the Patriarchs tended their flocks long ere the inhabitants of that country began to be civilized. The art of manufacturing the fleece of the sheep into clothing was well known by the early shepherds,— not merely the rude process of felting, but the superior pliability, and beauty, and easiness of adaptation, and comfortable feeling which result from the mechanism of the loom and the shuttle, Those primitive shep- herds, however, whose history, as associated with the sheep, has been rapidly traced, were connected with Egypt. Abraham sojourned there ; and the descendants of Jacob were captives in Egypt more than one hundred and fifty years. Modern historians have united in tracing the invention of weaving to the Egyptians,—the weaving not of wool, how- ever, but of flax; arid the fabric of the linen cloths in which some of the Egyptian mummies were wrapped has scarcely been excelled at the present day. Yet it may be questioned whether the claims of the nomadic shepherds have been fairly considered. The cultivation of the sheep was coeval with the expulsion from Paradise: the cultivation of flax must have been an improyveme in husbandry of far later date. When the descendants of Noah were seattered, they pursued their old avocation,— their flocks and their herds accompanied them until they chanced to find some peculiarly fertile and convenient tract, which they gradually made their permanent abode; and then, building cities for themselves, they by degrees changed their way of life, and applied the arts, which they already possessed, to other and more extensive purposes. |
The children of Mizraim, the offspring of Ham, found in Egypt a soil not well fitted for the prosperous management of the sheep. The Nile over- flowed its banks twice in the year; and when its waters receded, a surface was left that was soon covered with luxuriant vegetation, but which infected and destroyed the sheep that fed upon it. Accident or experiment, however, soon proved that it was favourable to the cultivation of flax, and that from the fibres of the flax fine linen might be woven. Did the discovery of the flax lead to the invention of weaving, or was an art, known and practised for many a century before, directed to the manufacture of ihis new material? The latter is the more probable supposition, espe- cially if it is recollected, that during the early period of the history of the Patriarchs, some associated tribes, that had previously inhabited the country to the east of Egypt, invaded and conquered the districts bor- dering on the Nile, and established a dynasty there under the appellation of the Shepherd Kings. The Abimelech, with whom Abraham had controversy, and who presented to him sheep, oxen, and slaves, was one of those shepherd kings.
To Egypt, then, let the honour still be yielded of having first woven the fibres of the stalk of the flax into linen; but the invention of weaving —the conversion into cloth of the animal fibres that grow on the back of the sheep—is a claim of yet more ancient date, and belongs either to those who wandered with their flocks far from the plains of Ararat, or who carried the customs and arts of their forefathers into the country which they subjugated.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE WOMEN.
The simplicity and small bulk of the loom enabled the female, whether in the tent of the wanderer or the settled residence of the citizen, to employ herself in the manufacture of clothing for her husband and her family.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE WOMEN. 39
A modern traveller thus describes the loom at present found among the Arab shepherds :—
“The Arab women use a very simple loom; it is called nutow, and consists of two short sticks, which are stuck into the ground at a certain distance according to the desired breadth of the shauke, or piece to be worked. A third stick is placed across over them ; about four yards from them three sticks are placed in the same manner ; and, over the two hori- zontal cross sticks, the woof (sadouh). To keep the upper and under woof at a proper distance from each other, a flat stick, called mensebhk, is placed between them. A piece of wood serves as the weaver’s shuttle, and a short gazelle’s horn is used in beating back the thread of the shuttle. The loom is placed before the maharrem or women’s apartment, and worked by the mother and her daughters. The distaff (maghezel el souf) is in general use among the Aenezes. At Palmyra I saw several men using the distaff; and among the Kelby Arabs all the shepherds manufacture wool *,”
From another traveller it appears, that even a perfect loom is not indis- pensable to the manufacture of woollen cloth! ‘To this day, in Barbary, women are employed in the manufacture of their Aykes, or blankets, who do not use the shuttle, but conduct every thread of the wool with their fingers +.
It may now be easily understood how Hannah provided the yearly little coat for her son Samuel. By a singular coincidence, as nearly as pos- sible about the same time, but in other countries, Penelope is described as unravelling at night all that she had woven in the day; Helen, with all her faults, is found employed at the loom; and even Calypso and Circe are spoken of as busied in household duties of this kind { Many cen- turies after this, the unfortunate Lucretia, when visited by Tarquin, was employed in carding and spinning wool with her domestics. Alexander the Great presented the ladies of the Court of Darius with some woollen cloth, the workmanship of his mother and sisters. It is true, that in his anxiety to treat his prisoners with courtesy, and at the same time to display the excellent qualities, as he supposed, of those who were dear to him, he forgot the debased character of the luxurious.and enslaved people whom he had conquered, and gave offence by the homeliness of the present. Still later, however, and returning to the capital of the world, and in its state of greatest luxury, Augustus was not ashamed to boast that he wore the clothes which had been manufactured by his wife and sister and daughters. It will be seen, when the history of the sheep is traced down to the present day, that in every country and in every age, while sim- plicity of manners and the truest virtues of the female character were retained, such was the ordinary and chosen employment. ‘ She maketh herself,” says Solomon, ‘ coverings of tapestry; her candle goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff §.”
There is a passage in Virgil which affords a beautiful illustration of this description of the employment of the good wife; indéed, it bears so
* Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabites, by Lewis Burckhardt, p. 38.
+ Shaw’s Travels, p. 224. ` i
t Homers Iliad, iii. v. 25, and Odyss. ii. 94, and vi. 52.
§ See Theocrit. Idyll. 15.; Suetonius, Aug. 73.; and Fleury’s History of the Israelites, p. 72. See also a Tract on Wool, by Mr. Wansey, somewhat erroneous in the principle which it advocates, but full of interesting information with regard to the history of wool.
40 SHEEP
great a resemblance to it, that it might almost pass for a poetical imita- tion. “ Night was now sliding in her middle course:
The first repose was finished: when the dame
Who, by her distaff’s slender art subsists,
Wakes the spread embers and the sleeping fire.
Night adding to her work, and calls her maids
To their long tasks by lighted tapers urged *.”
EMBROIDERY.
A passage in the book of Judges shows that the art of embroidery was not only known, but carried to great perfection, at an early period of the history of the tribes. The Israelites had done evil in the sight of the Lord, and were for twenty years oppressed by Jabin, one of the most powerful of the kings of Canaan. At length they rebelled, and Sisera, the captain or commander-in-chief of Jabin’s troops, assembled a considerable army to quell the rebellion. Some time elapsed, and he returned not to his family, nor had any tidings of him reached them. His mother stood at one of the windows of her house anxiously looking out for him, while her wise ladies (her ladies in waiting) were trying to console her. Their argument is very characteristic. ‘‘ Have they not sped ?”—It is not pos- sible that they could have failed. ‘“ Have they not divided the prey ?”— Are they not now delayed by the division of the prey? ‘ For every man a slave or two. To Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides meet for the necks of them that take the spoil +!’
It is singular that Homer, speaking of the Greeks seventy or eighty years after this, describes the progress of this art among them,—he speaks of the ‘ painted garments” adorned with flowers and trees in beautiful colours, Pliny $ says, that after this the Phrygians, not far dis- tant from Canaan, wrought these with needles. Still later they were in- terwoven with various coloured worsteds, and with gold thread; and ata more distant period, a beautiful kind of embroidery was made at Babylon, called, on account of its execution and value, ‘* Babylonish Garments.” It was the sight of one of these, amidst the spoils of Jericho, that tempted Achan, one hundred and sixty years before, to break the Divine com- mand §. It further appears that only the higher class of persons were permitted to wear these Babylonish robes |; which are, therefore, by anticipation, appropriated to Sisera as his share of the spoil. It is really pleasing to be able to collect these singularly accurate confirmations of the sacred history, and likewise to see the arts of various kinds flourishing among the Israelites and in their neighbourhood, at a time when they were perfectly in their infancy in those countries that were afterwards the espe- cial residence of science and philosophy.
TITHES.
According to the Levitical law, sheep, as well as ‘all the seed of the land and the fruit of the tree,” were tithed. In the last chapter of Leviticus, the method of separating the tenth is pointed out in somewhat obscure terms. “ And concerning the tithes of the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth shall be holy (shall be devoted) unto the Lord. He shall not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he
* Aineid. viii. v. 407,—Trappe's Translation. E + Judges v. 20. + Lib, viii. e48. $ Joshua vii. 21 i} Burder's Oriental Customs, vol. ii. p. 88.
HOSPITALITY OF THE ARABS RESUMED. 4l
change it *.” The explanation of this is curious and satisfactory. “ The cattle were all brought into a sheep-cote, in which there was but one gate, and that so narrow as to suffer only one to come out at a time. The dams being placed without, and the gate opened, the young ones were invited by their bleating to pass out to them. As they passed by, one by one, a man who stood at the gate with a rod coloured with ochre, told them in order, and when the tenth came out he marked it with his rod as the tithe
sheep +.” THE BREED OF BASHAN.
Whether there were different breeds of sheep, or different varieties of the same breed, cultivated for particular purposes, cannot be determined. Speaking, however, of benefits that had been conferred on the Israelites, Moses alludes to rams of the breed of Bashan as a peculiar and superior sort $. In other parts of scripture the bulls of Bashan § are mentioned. It was a district that fell to the lot of the tribes of Reuben and Gad, being part of the land of Gilead, and celebrated for its rich pasturage. Cattle and sheep probably sooner fattened there and grew to a larger size, but there is no reason to suppose that there was any other peculiarity in the breed,
THE MALE ONLY EATEN.
By comparing together various detached parts of scripture, some addi- tional information may be obtained regarding the sheep, as contributing to the food of man. The history of the patriarchs, the regulations of the Mosaic ritual, and a few occurrences of later date, casually mentioned, prove that its flesh was eaten, yet not as ordinary food ; it was reserved for occasions of peculiar festivity, or for the hospitable entertainment of the stranger. But the male only was, with few exceptions, destroyed; the Paschal lamb was a male—those offered in sacrifice were usually males— and Jacob, pleading the fidelity with which he had served Laban, protests, “ the rams of thy flock have I not eaten ||.” When such a system was pursued, it will not be surprising that the flocks of the patriarchs were so numerous, and that those of the Arabs of the present day, who have nearly the same customs, are numerous too,
HOSPITALITY OF THE ARABS RESUMED.
Some facts, related in the continuation of the Old Testament history, give a more extended view of the hospitality of the shepherds. A lamb or kid was usually selected for the entertainment of the stranger. It was roasted or seethed in its own gravy, and often served whole; and that which remained after the feast, or a part of it, was given to the trayeller to support him on his journey. When Gideon was summoned to become the deliverer of Israel, he mistook the heavenly messenger for a prophet, and with all the hospitality of his vocation and of the time in which he lived, “he made ready a kid and unleavened cakes of flour, and he put the flesh in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak4.” Harmer well observes that there is a passage in the narrative of a modern traveller that affords a perfect commentary on this. “ Besides a bowl of milk and a basket of figs, raisins and dates, which were presented to us immediately on our arrival, the master of the tent where we lodged fetched us from his flock a kid, a goat, a lamb, or a sheep, according to the
aoe T Wot z , : Ai í * Ley, xxvii. 32, 33. i Burder s Oriental Literature, vol, ii, p 62. § Psal. sl, 12.
T Deut. xxxii, 15. ete eo a TE || Gen, xxxi. 38. Y Judges vi. 19
42 SHEEP
number of our party, half of which was seethed by his wife and served up, and the rest was made kab-ab,—this is cut into pieces, roasted, and pre- served for our breakfast or dinner next day*. May we not suppose that Gideon, having presented some slight refreshment to the supposed prophet, killed a kid, seethed a part of it, and brought the stewed meat in a pot with unleavened cakes of bread, and the kab-ab in a basket, to be carried away with him in order to serve him for some after-repast on his journey ?4
THE DELICACY OF THE LAMB.
When the primitive shepherds indulged themselves with animal food, the flesh of the lamb was considered as an especial dainty. Thus Amos speaks of those “ who lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall {.” Sir John Chardin, who travelled through Palestine and the neighbouring countries, says that “ the lambs of this breed, with the accu- mulation of fat about the haunches, must be eaten in order to form a con- ception of the moisture, taste, and delicacy of this animal.” Hence they were used as presents; Samson sent one to his father-in-law, and Jesse, when he brought his son David to Saul, made him the bearer of some bread, a bottle of wine, and a lamb. It is probably with reference to this deli- cacy that the Psalmist speaks of his soul being satisfied as with marrow and fatness §.
Particular parts of the lamb were considered as especial delicacies, When Samuel entertained Saul, the future king of Israel, “ he brought him into the parlour, and made him sit in the chiefest place among them that were bidden, which were about thirty persons; and Samuel said unto the cook, Bring out the portion which I gave thee, of which I said unto thee, set it by thee; and the cook took up the shoulder and that which was upon it, and set it before Saul |.” The shoulder of the lamb, of the present breed, before the fat begins to accumulate about it, is no bad dish, although it would not now be selected as quite the favourite one. There is no disputing, however, about tastes. The reader will find a somewhat ludicrous, but a singularly satisfactory illustration of this passage in a note {. i
The lamb or the kid was not, however, to be seethed in its mother’s milk **, This was not because there appeared to be something revolting and unna- tural in employing that with which the mother had nourished her young, in preparing it for the table, but because a superstition, derived from an idola- trous practice, was connected with this method of dressing the lamb. “‘ It was a custom of the ancient heathens, when they had gathered in all their fruits, to take a kid and boil it in the dam’s milk ; and then, in a magical way, to go and besprinkle with it all their trees, fields, gardens, and orchards, thinking by this means they should make them bring forth more abundant fruit the following year. Wherefore God forbad his people, the Jews, at
* Shaw’s Travels, p. 12.
+ Harmer’s Observations, vol. i. p. 330. 4 { Amos vi. 4,
§ Psal, Ixiii. 5, || 1 Sam. ix. 22, 23, 24,
@ « Abdomalek, the Califfh, upon his entering Cufah, made a splendid entertain- ment. When he sat down, Amron, the son of Haroth, an ancient Mechzumean, came in. He called him unto him, and placing him by him upon his sofa, asked him what meat he liked best of all he had ever eaten. The old Mechzumean answered, an ass’s neck well seasoned and well roasted. What say you, says Abdomalek, to a leg or shoulder of a sucking lamb well seasoned and well roasted, and covered over with butter and milk ?”’—Oakley’s History of the Saracens, vol. ii., p. 277.
This perfectly explains why it was set apart for the future monarch, and it probably explains too what it was that was upon the shoulder.
** Exod. xxiii. 19 -
'
QUALITIES OF DIFFERENT MILKS. 43
the fais of their ingathering to use any such superstitious or idolatrous rite.”
It was forbidden to eat any of the flesh (referring principally to sheep) that had been torn by wild beasts}. There might be two reasons for this, —the Jews were forbidden to eat of any animal that died with the blood in it, and there could be no security that the blood had been perfectly drained away when it was thus found dead. There might be another and not improbable reason, -all Palestine and Arabia abounded with wolves, foxes, and dogs. ‘They are varieties of animals most of all subject to rabies. The sheep might have been worried by a rabid animal; some of the empoisoned saliva might remain about the wound or fleece, and, the carcase being carelessly handled, hydrophobia might be easily commu- nicated.
CASTRATION,
One circumstance more may be hinted at before another part of the subject is taken into consideration. Mention has just been made of “ calves out of the midst of the stall,” and reference is elsewhere made to the ox and the stalled ox. It must not, however, be presumed that the castration of the bull-calf was practised in very early times; for it is the same He- brew word that is translated indiscriminately ox }, ox at plough §, wild ox|, bullock q, bull **, and cattle. It is a generic term: it means the male of the ox genus, or, in some places, and in the last quotation, the ox genus, without distinction of male or female. No word signifying the wether, or castrated sheep, is to be found in the whole of the scriptural history ; but there are, however, passages in which it is forbidden to offer any except the perfect animal in sacrifice, and even human beings injured in or deprived of the testicles were forbidden to appear in the Temple. It is probable, therefore, that this method of increasing the tendency to fatness in the sheep, and effecting earlier maturity, and also, to a certain degree, improving the wool, was unknown to the Jews both in earlier and later times. Indeed it is not likely with regard to sheep, that, little as these animals were used for food, a practice should be resorted to, the principal influence of which would be to increase the propensity to fatten early. There is likewise no account of the sheep being stalled for this purpose.
EWE’S MILK USED AS FOOD.
It may now be proper to enter more fully into the consideration of the nutriment derived from the milk of sheep. It has been seen that, during the antediluvian age, it was thus alone that the sheep contributed to the foodof man. The.milk and the wool were the only products for which this animal was domesticated, and for which, in some parts of the world, he is even at the present day bred. In proportion, however, as agriculture has improved, the milk of the sheep has ceased to be an article of human sus- oo and has been appropriated to its natural purpose, the food of the amb.
QUALITIES OF DIFFERENT MILKSe
Ewe’s milk, when freshly drawn, has an appearance very similar to that of the cow, except that it often has a peculiar oiliness about it: it yields how- ever a greater quantity of cream, and forms a very soft kind of butter. In a most learned and useful work on the general properties of milk, by
* Cudworth on the Lord’s Supper, p. 14. + Exod. xxii. 31. t Exod. xxi. 28. § Deut. xxii. 10. {| Deut. xiv. 5. «| Num. xv. 11, ** Gen, xxxii. 15; Ps. L. 10
44 SHEEP.
Messrs. Parmentier and Desyeux, the following table is given of the com- parative value of the milk of the domesticated animal, with reference to the several uses to which it may be converted :—
For Butter. Cheese, Sugar, Whey.
The Sheep 5 Goat * Ass Ass
. Sheep . Mare Mare . Cow : Cow Cow . Ass ° Goat. Goat e Mare a Sheep . Sheep So that from equal quantities of milk the greatest produce of butter would be obtained from that of the ewe; of cheese from that of the goat; and of sugar from that of the ass: but, at the same time, the sheep is inferior to the goat only, and superior to the cow, in the production of cheese. If, however, ewe’s milk excels that of the cow in the quantity of butter yielded, that butter is inferior in quality; it is less solid; it has an unpleasant oily taste, and it soon becomes rancid. On this account, probably, there are few places in which mention is made of ewe’s butter as an article of food, and there is no recorded instance of its having been an article of commerce *. : CHEESE FROM EWE’S MILK.
Ewe’s milk was used in the manufacture of cheese many centuries before there is any record of this article of human sustenance being de- rived from the milk of the cow. Ewe-milk cheese was often made in the early times on a large scale, and was a very material and valued article of - food, Butter is frequently spoken of in the sacred scriptures, but it is the opinion of the best commentators that, during the first period of the Jewish history, the word so translated means the caseous and not the oleaginous product of milk. In one passage, where the mechanism described is too plain to be mistaken, the proper translation is given, and that in the most ancient book in the world, ‘* Hast thou not poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese t.” There is much reason to believe that this was the product of the sheep, for such was the cheese spoken of by other writers of a remote age; and the “ butter of kine,” mentioned in a later period of Jewish record, would seem to be a delicacy of rare occurrence, promised as the reward of obedience.
THE DAIRY OF POLYPHEMUS.
Homer, who flourished 900 years before the Christian æra, describes the cave of Polyphemus as it appeared to Ulysses and his companions. It is the earliest record of the process of making ewe-milk cheese and of sheep-management generally, and therefore it is given here at some length. Ulysses is speaking. l
Around the grot we gaze, and all we view,
In order ranged, our admiration drew:
The bending shelves with loads of cheeses pressed, The folded flocks each separate from the rest.
(The larger here, and there the lesser lambs,
The new-fall’n young here bleating for their dams, The kid distinguished from the lambkin lies) : The cavern echoes with responsive cries.
The monster now approaches, bringing home the rest of the ewes.
Now driven before him through the arching rock Come tumbling, heaps on heaps, the unnumber'd flock ; Big-udder’d ewes, and goats of female kind.
The males were penn’d in outward courts behind.,
* Rees’s Cyclopedia, Art, Minx. + Job x, 10.
ARAB MANUFACTURE OF EWE-MILK BUTTER. 45
Having driven them all into the eave, he closes the door, and commences his evening occupation.
He next betakes him to his evening cares,
And, sitting down, to milk his ewes prepares :
Of half their udders eases first the dams,
Then to the mother’s teats submits the lambs.
Half the white stream to hardening cheese he press’d, Aud high in wicker baskets heaped: the rest Reserved in bowls, supplied the mighty feast *
Euripides and Theocritus speak of cheese, but never of butter. Atis- totle gives several directions respecting the manufacture of cheese, but says nothing of butter: in fact it was not known to the early or even the later Greeks. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, speaks of the milk or the product of the milk of the ewes being eaten by the Greeks in his time,—* Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock ? +”
VIRGIL’S MANUFACTURE OF CHEESE.
Nearly 900 years after the time of Homer, Virgil speaks of circum- stances connected with the manufacture of cheese from ewe’s milk, but he says not a word of that which may be obtained from the milk of the cow.
Some when the kids their dams too deeply drain, With gags and muzzles their soft mouths restrain. Their morning meal the peasants press at night, Their evening meal before the rising light.
To market bear, or sparingly them steep
With seasoning salt, and stored for winter keep f.
ARAB MANUFACTURE OF EWE-MILK BUTTER AND CHEESE.
Mr. Burckhardt gives the following account of the manufacture of butter from ewe’'s and goat’s milk by the Syrian Arabs. “ The sheep and goats are milked during the three spring months, morning and evening. They are sent out to pasture before sun-rise, while the lambs or kids remain in or near the camp. About ten o'clock the herd returns, and the lambs are allowed to satiate themselves, after which the ewes belonging to each tent are tied to a long cord, and milked one after another. When a ewe is feeble in health her milk is left wholly for the lamb. The same process occurs at sun-set. From a hundred ewes or goats (the milk of which is always mixed together) the Arabs expect, in common years, about eight lbs. of butter per day, or about seven cwt. in the three spring months. What the Arab’s family does not use is sold to the peasants or town’s
eople. The male lambs or kids are sold or slaughtered except two or three which the Arabs keep for breeding. In years of scarcity both sheep and goats prove altogether barren. The Aeneses shear their sheep once a-year near the end of spring. They usually sell the whole of the wool before the sheep are shorn, at so much per 100 sheep §.” :
Several travellers describe the same process among the Bedouins and Moors of Barbary, and which probably, as with regard to every thing else concerning them, does not differ much from the ancient custom. ‘“ Their method of making butter is by putting the milk or cream into a goat-skin, tumed inside out, which they suspend from one side of the tent to the other,
* Pope’s translation of the Odyssey, lib, ix. $1 Cor, ix. 7. $ Georg. IIÍ. Dryden's Translation, § Notes on the Bedouins, p. 114.
46 SHEEP.
and then passing it to and fro in one uniform direction, they quickly occa- sion a separation of the unctuous and wheyey parts *,”
“ The butter of the Moors in the empire of Morocco, which is bad, is made by putting the milk into a skin, and shaking it until the butter sepa- rates from it +.”
Hasselquist, speaking of an encampment of the Arabs, which he found not far from Tiberias, on the foot of the mountain or hill on which Christ preached his sermon, says, “ They make butter in a leathern bag hung on three poles erected for the purpose in the form of a cone, and drawn to and fro by two women $.”
In the Levant they tread upon the skins with their feet. Does this throw any light on a passage in Job, who, when speaking of his former prosperity, says, “ I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil §?’ He or his servants were so constantly employed in manufacturing butter from the milk which his innumerable flocks yielded, that the rocks or broad stones on which the skins were placed, might be said to pour out rivers of oily matter, and their feet were washed in the semi-fluid butter, for it resembled a kind of concrete oil more than any- thing else.
There are few of the modern Arabs who, at the present day, use or know the value of the milk of the cow. To this purpose is the testimony of an intelligent traveller. “ By the present Arabs the camel’s milk is used to drink either alone or mixed with rice and flour, and either sweet or sour; the butter is made of goat or sheep’s milk. It is put into a goat’s skin, tied to one of the tent poles, and for one or two hours con- stantly moved backward and forward. ‘The buttery substance then coagu- lates, the water is poured out, and the butter is put into another skin. If after two days they have collected a certain quantity of butter, they place it over the fire, throw in a handful of burgoul (wheat boiled with some leaven and then dried in the sun), and leave it to boil, skimming it care- fully. After having boiled for some time, the bourgoul precipitates all the foreign substances, and the butter remains quite clear at the top. The bourgoul that has been thus used is eaten by the children. They seldom make any cheese, but other Arab tribes, and particularly those of Ohl-el- Shemél, manufacture much cheese and sell it to the other tribes ||.”
He adds that the Bedouins eat butter to excess. Whoever can afford such luxury swallows every morning a large cupful of butter before break- fast, and snuffs up as much as he can into his nostrils, while his whole food swims in butter 4.
The quantity of butter yielded by the flock as reported by Burckhardt, viz, eight pounds a-day by a hundred ewes, or rather more than half a pound per day by each ewe, would scarcely repay the modern dairyman for his trouble and expense. It appears that, whether from the peculiarity of the breed, or faulty management, or the hardships to which the flocks were necessarily subjected by their frequent journeys and occasional deficiency
oe
* Shaw’s Travels, p. 168. ;
¢ Stewarts Journey to Maquines.
t Hasselquist’s Travels, p. 159. See also Burder’s Oriental Customs, vol. i. p. 138, and Stewart’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 35. § Job xxxix. 6.
|| Burckhardt’s Notes on the Bedouins, p. 35.—M. de Brisson, in his singular history of his captivity among the African Arabs, says, that ‘‘ when the butter which is obtained from sheep and goats, and camel’s milk mixed, is churned, they put it into small skins where it acquires a rancid smell, which, according to the taste of these barbarians, greatly en ‘hances its value. The women use it in pomatum for their hair, and without this they would think something deficient in their dress.”—p. 91.
€) Burckhardt’s Notes, p, 137.
MANUFACTURE OF EWE-MILK CHEESE IN BRITAIN. 47
of food, that neither the sheep nor the kine in former times were very pro- ductive of milk. There is a passage in Isaiah illustrative of this. The prophet is speaking of a time of extraordinary plenty, “ and it shall come to pass in that day that a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep, and it shall come to pass that from the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter*,” he shall be able to indulge himself in this favourite luxury of the wandering shepherd. It would seem strange in modern times, if with a cow and two ewes producing milk, he were not able to do this in ordinary years.
The land of Canaan is, on account of its great fertility, spoken of as “ flowing with milk and honey +:” and it is predicted of the Messiah by Isaiah, “ butter and honey shall he eat $? D'Arvieux, being in the camp of the Grand Emir, who lived in much splendour and treated him with great hospitality, was entertained on the first morning with little loaves, honey, newly-churned butter, and cream more delicate than he had ever seen §, Inanother place he says, one of the principal articles with which the Arabs regale themselves at breakfast is new butter mingled with honey. He adds, that “ although these do not seem to suit very well, experience teaches that it is no bad mixture, nor disagreeable in its taste if one is ever so little accustomed to it ||.”
MANUFACTURE OF EWE-MILK CHEESE IN BRITAIN.
Until a century or two ago, the manufacture of ewe-milk cheese was common in most parts of England. Mr. Culley says that it used to be a general practice through Northumberland to milk the ewes, after the lambs were weaned, for six, eight, or ten weeks; and from this milk great quan- tities of cheese were made, which sold for about 3d. per lb. when kept to
three years old. It was exceedingly pungent, and on that account some persons preferred it to cheese made from the milk of the cow 4.
In some parts of Wales, the ewes still continue to be milked. It used to be particularly the case in the lower part of Glamorganshire; the milk was mixed with that of the dairy, and made a palatable tart cheese **
In Scotland it was the universal practice, and still remains so in some parts of the Highlands, nor will the memory of it be erased, nor the custom quite cease, while some of the beautiful poetry of these districts remains. The cheese is said to acquire sometimes a smoky flavour, but, where that is not found, it is acknowledged to have a rich taste, with a not unpleasant tartness. The editor of the Encyclopedia Edinensis says, that it digests more readily than that which has been made from cow’s milk, but is less nutritive. He adds, that goat’s milk is more easily digested, but is also less nourishing, than either tt.
* Isaiah vii. 21, 22.
+ Joshua v. 6, It is a proverbial expression denoting plants. So Euripides, speak- ing of a fertile country, says, that “ it flows with milk and wine and the nectar of bees,’ — Bacch. Evod. v. 8.—So Ovid, :
“« New streams of milk, new streams of nectar flowed, And from the oak the yellow honey dropped.” —Metamorph. I. v. 111. See also Homer’s Iliad, IX. v. 141, and Burder’s Oriental Literature, vol. i. p. 110. į Isaiah vii. 15. : § Voyage dans Palestine, p. 24. Voyage dans Palestine, p. 197; Harmer’s Observations, vol. i. Pe cole
€ Report of Northumberland. =x Lloyd and Turners Report.
+h Brewster’s Encyclopedia, Art. Cumzsz.—One of the best accounts of this system of ewe-milking in the north is coutained in a, ‘ Letter on Sheep-Husbandry in the North, by Mr. Herbert,’ in that useful periodical the ‘ British Farmer’s Magazine,’ November, 1830. “ It appears to have been the pretty general practice forty years ago, to milk the ewe flocks, and either make ewe cheese, or mix and churn it with that of the cows, and
48 SHEEP,
In Ireland the practice is as common as in any part of Scotland, and there, probably from want of cleanliness, the milk has a sharper and more smoky taste.
OBJECTIONS TO THE SYSTEM OF EWE-MILKING.
The milking of the ewes and the manufacture of this kind of cheese has now deservedly got into disuse in all except a very few districts, Barnaby Googe was the first and almost the only one of the old agricul- tural writers who had sufficient good sense to perceive the absurdity and mischief of it, where good Husbandry, in other respects, prevailed. His condemnation of it is short, but pithy. “ In the mean time you must not deale with the milking of ewes, so shall you have them to beare the more wooll, and bring the more lambes*.”
As for the old practice of commencing the ewe-milking before the lamb was weaned, and thus stealing a portion of the nutriment, rarely or never too abundant, which nature had designed for the young one, it is too absurd, as well as palpably injurious, to merit serious refutation. Now that the value of the wool and the flesh of the sheep is so much increased, it is received as a principle, admitting of no exception, that the lamb should be abundantly supplied with food. If the fleece is to be good, and especially if the animal is to be brought to quick maturity,—if these are now the acknowledged objects of sheep husbandry, the lamb must not be stinted and starved when young. ‘I don’t know,” said an experienced farmer to Mr. Marshall, who was asking him by what means he brought his young sheep to so high a state of condition, ‘I don’t know,—they were lambed fat, and they have been fat ever since ; though I believe that I have kept them as well as I could keep them f.” It is an easy thing to keep young sheep in good condition when they have not been neglected at first ; but exceedingly difficult, if they have been once let down, ever to make them fat again, or, indeed, scarcely worth keeping f.
_ The Spaniards, with all their bad management in other respects, appear
some of the small farmers are said to follow it to thisday. The milking, which was per- formed every morning and evening, chiefly by women and children, commenced the day after the lambs were taken from the ewes, and continued till about the middle of Sep- tember, when the ewes were dried off, and well fed preparatory to their receiving the ram. They are said to have yielded from a pint to a pint and three quarters, and some a quart per day. They were milked in little stalls made for the purpose, and are said to have set their legs with as much firmness as a gentle milch cow. Some of the milkers would milk twenty-five of them in an hour.” Certainly this is the least objectionable mode of ewe-milking: the lambs, at least, were not stinted and starved.
* Barnaby Googe’s Art and Trade of Husbandrie, p. 134.
+ Marshall’s Rur. Econ, Mid]. Counties, vol. i. p. 326.
t A writer in the Farmer's Magazine for 1807, p. 434, gives a ludicrous account of this species of ewe-milking. “Care is taken to stint the lambs (this is indeed a very appropriate word, both as it regards their present nutriment and their future growth and value) by milking the ewes every evening before the lambs are admitted to them, This is a scene which I well remember to have witnessed more than 30 years ago, when a boy at school in Perthshire. The maids purposely delayed it until after sunset, that they might have the assistance of their sweethearts, the unmarried ploughmen, after they had pulled their stated number of back loads of thistles. The ewes were driven in a body into a bugAt (or small fold), whence they were taken one by one as wanted to be milked. It was then that the swain’s assistance was of use. He dragged the reluctant ewe from the bught, and held her by the horns, while the maid going behind her, ab. stracted perhaps two or three gills from her udder. Although a few minutes were usually sufficient for doing this, yet it was seldom performed without something else being added by the ewe to the contents of the pail. Although much of this was skimmed off by the damsel with her fingers, yet, together with the yolk and grease from her hands, might it not somewhat contribute to impart that aromatic, pungent taste, by which ewe-milk cheese then was, and now is, distinguished ?”
MANUFACTURE OF EWE-MILK CHEESE IN BRITAIN. 4g
to be fully aware of the necessity of keepmg the lamb well, in or er to insure a fine and plentiful fleece. Every lamb in the migrating flocks has, besides his natural mother, a foster one; and for this purpose a suffi- cient number, or probably half of the lambs, are quickly weaned and destroyed.
As for the milking after the weaning of the lambs, there is not so much inconvenience or mischief from the struggles of the ewe, for she feels relieved by the occasional abstraction of the milk with which her udder is overloaded, and soon begins to submit to the operation with tolerable quietness : but there are still insuperable objections to the practice. The Jamb must be weaned early in the season, or little profit will be derived from the milk of the ewe; and for the sake of this early weaning, the time of lambing must be contrived to be as early as possible,—in the depth of winter, or before the winter has scarcely passed,—and then, some of the ewes, and more of the lambs, will perish by cold. The lamb must also be taken from the mother at a time when her milk is necessary to him; when he has not yet learned, or has not sufficient strength to obtain nourish- ment enough from other sources for the full development of his form and distinguishing qualities ; and more will ultimately be lost by his diminished value, or by the expense afterwards incurred to get him into saleable condition, than many times the quantity of milk obtained from the dam would tepay. The mischief, however, is not confined to the lambs, for when this drain on the mother is protracted beyond the period that nature designs, some other produce that she was intended to yield, and probably a more profitable one, must be proportionably diminished. That which should have increased the weight of the fleece, or of the carcase, or given her a disposition to improve, or brought her regularly and effectually into season for impregnation, or given her strength to yean a full-grown and healthy lamb, has been gradually abstracted in the milk. It used to be observed, even at the time when this practice was most common, that he who followed it up too closely was sure to have fewer lambs, and smaller, and leaner, and eventually of less value ; his cast ewes were more out of condition, and more difficult to be prepared for the butcher ; and, in the following spring, he had far more barren ewes than his neighbour, who either did not pursue this system to so great an extent, or did not pursue it at all *, i :
Mr. W. Hogg, when treating on the Flesh-fly or Maggot in Sheep, has an observation that deserves more attention than has been paid to it, He had been saying that a peculiar fetid smell accompanied not only diarrhoea, but the discharge of healthy feeces ; that this lodged among the wool above the anus and round the root of the tail, and that it was within the influence of this odour that the fly always deposited its eggs at the