CHAP. III.

OF ANIMALS OF THE SHEEP AND GOAT KIND.

As no two animals are found entirely the same, so it is not to be expected that any two races of animals should exactly correspond in every particular. The goat and the sheep are apparently different in the form of their bodies, in their covering, and in their horns. They may from hence be considered as two different kinds, with regard to all common and domestic purposes. But if we come to examine them closer, and observe their internal conformation, no two animals can be more alike; their feet, their four stomachs, their suet, their appetites, all are entirely the same, and show the similitude between them; but what makes a much stronger connection is, that they propagate with each other. The buck-goat is found to produce with the ewe an animal that in two or three generations returns to the sheep, and seems to retain no marks of its ancient progenitor. The sheep and the goat, therefore, may be considered as belonging to one family; and were the whole races reduced to one of each they would quickly replenish the earth with their kind.

If we examine the sheep and the goat internally, we shall find, as was said, that their confirmation is entirely the same; nor is their structure very remote from that of the cow kind, which they resemble in their hoofs and in their chewing the cud. Indeed, all ruminant animals are internally very much alike. The goat, the sheep, and the deer exhibit to the eye of the anatomist the same parts in miniature which the cow or the bison exhibit in the great. But the differences in these animals are nevertheless sufficiently apparent. Nature has obviously marked the distinctions between the cow and the sheep kind by their form and size; and they are also distinguished from those of the deer kind by never shedding their horns. Indeed, the form and figure of these animals, if there were nothing else, would seldom fail of guiding us to the kind; and we might almost upon sight tell which belong to the deer kind and which are degraded into that of the goat. However, the annually shedding the horns in the deer and the permanence in the sheep draws a pretty exact line between the two kinds; so that we may hold to this distinction only, and define the sheep and goat kind as ruminant animals of a smaller size that never shed their horns.

If we consider these harmless and useful animals in one point of view, we shall find that both have been long reclaimed, and brought into a state of domestic servitude. Both seem to require protection from man, and are in some measure pleased with his society. The sheep, indeed, is the more serviceable creature of the two; but the goat has more sensibility and attachment. The attending upon both was once the employment of the wisest and best of men; and those have been ever supposed the happiest times in which these harmless creatures were considered as the chief objects of human attention. In the earliest ages the goat seemed rather the greater favourite; and, indeed, in some countries it continues such to this day among the poor. However, the sheep has long since become the principal object of human care; while the goat is disregarded by the generality of mankind, or become the possession only of the lowest of the people. The sheep, therefore, and its varieties may be considered first; and the goat, with all its kind, will then properly follow.

THE SHEEP. Those animals that take refuge under the protection of man in a few generations become indolent and helpless. Having lost the habit of self-defence, they seem to lose also the instincts of Nature. The sheep, in its present domestic state, is of all animals the most defenceless and inoffensive. With its liberty it seems to have been deprived of its swiftness and cunning;

and what in the ass might rather be called patience in the sheep appears to be stupidity. With no one quality to fit it for self-preservation, it makes vain efforts at all. Without swiftness, it endeavours to fly; and without strength, sometimes offers to oppose. But these feeble attempts rather incite than repress the insults of every enemy; and the dog follows the flock with greater delight upon seeing them fly, and attacks them with more fierceness upon their unsupported attempts at resistance. Indeed, they run together in flocks rather with the hopes of losing their single danger in the crowd than uuiting to repress the attack by numbers. The sheep, therefore, were it exposed in its present state to struggle with its natural enemies of the forest, would soon be extirpated. Loaded with a heavy fleece, deprived of the defence of its horns, and rendered heavy, slow, and feeble, it can have no other safety than what it finds from man. This animal is now, therefore, obliged to rely solely upon that art for protection to which it originally owes its degradation.

But we are not to impute to Nature the formation of an animal so utterly unprovided against its enemies and so unfit for defence. The mouflon, which is the sheep in a savage state, is a bold, fleet creature, able to escape from the greater animals by its swiftness, or to oppose the smaller kinds with the arms it has received from Nature. It is by human art alone that the sheep has become the tardy, defenceless creature we find it. Every race of quadrupeds might easily be corrupted by the same allurements by which the sheep has been thus debilitated and depressed. While undisturbed and properly supplied, none are found to set any bounds to their appetite. They all pursue their food while able, and continue to graze, till they often die of disorders occasioned by too much fatness. But it is very different with them in a state of nature: they are in the forest surrounded by dangers and alarmed with unceasing hostilities; they are pursued every hour from one tract of country to another, and spend a greater part of their time in attempts to avoid their enemies. Thus constantly exercised, and continually practising all the arts of defence and escape, the animal at once preserves its life and native independence, together with its swiftness and the slender agility of its form.

The sheep in its servile state seems to be divested of all inclination of its own; and of all animals it appears the most stupid. Every quadruped has a peculiar turn of countenance-a physiognomy, if we may so call it, that generally marks its nature. The sheep seems to have none of those traits that betoken either courage or cunning; its large eyes separated from each other-its ears sticking out on each side-and its narrow nostrils, all testify the extreme simplicity of this creature; and the position of its horns, also, show that Nature designed the sheep rather for flight than combat. It appears & large mass of flesh supported upon four small, straight legs, ill fitted for carrying such a burden; its motions are awkward; it is easily fatigued, and often sinks under the weight of its own corpulency. In proportion as these marks of human transformation are more numerous, the animal becomes more helpless and stupid. Those which live upon a more fertile pasture and grow fat become entirely feeble; those that want horns are found more dull and heavy than the rest; those whose fleeces are longest and finest are most subject to a variety of disorders; and, in short, whatever changes have been wrought in this animal by the industry of man are entirely calcu lated for human advantage, and not for that of the creature itself. It might require a succession of ages before the sheep could be restored to its primitive state of activity, so as to become a match for its pursuers of the forest.

The goat, which it resembles in so many other respects, is much its superior. The one has its particular attachments, sees danger, and generally tries to escape it; but

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the other is timid without a cause, and secure when real danger approaches. Nor is the sheep, when bred up tame in the house and familiarised with its keepers, less obstinately absurd: from being dull and timid it then acquires a degree of pert familiarity-butts with its head, becomes mischievous, and shows itself everyway unworthy of being singled out from the rest of the flock. Thus it seems rather formed for slavery than friendship, and framed more for the necessities than the amusements of mankind. There is but one instance in which the sheep shows any attachment to its keeper; and that is seen rather on the continent than among us in Great Britain. What I allude to is, their following the sound of the shepherd's pipe. 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 but invention; but in many parts of the Alps, and even 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 apparently pleased with the sound of the pipe, which is blown with a reed, and resembles the chanter of the bagpipe. In this manner, in those countries that still continue poor, the Arcadian life is preserved in all its purity; but in countries where a greater inequality of conditions prevail the shepherd is generally some poor wretch who attends a flock from which he is to derive no benefits, and only guards those luxuries which he is not fated to share.

It does not appear from early writers that the sheep was bred in Britain; and it was not till several ages after this animal was cultivated that the woollen manufacture was carried on among us. That valuable branch of business lay for a considerable time in foreign hands; and we were obliged to import the cloth manufactured from our own materials. There were, notwithstanding, many unavailing efforts among our kings to introduce and preserve the manufacture at home. Henry II., by a patent granted to the weavers of London, directed that if any cloth was found made of a mixture of Spanish wool it should be burned by the mayor. Such edicts at length, although but slowly operated towards establishing this trade among us. The Flemings-who at the revival of arts possessed the art of cloth-working in a superior degree were invited to settle here; and soon afterwards foreign cloth was prohibited from being worn in England. In the time of Queen Elizabeth this manufacture received every encouragement; and many of the inhabitants of the Netherlands being forced, by the tyranny of Spain, to take refuge in this country, they improved us in those arts in which we at present excel the rest of the world. Every art, however, has its rise, its meridian, and its decline: and it is supposed by many that the woollen manufacture has for some time been decaying amongst us. The cloth now made is thought to be much worse than that of some years past, being neither so firm nor so fine, neither so much liked abroad nor so serviceable at home.

No country, however, produces such sheep as England, either with larger fleeces or better adapted for the business of clothing. Those of Spain, indeed, are finer, and we generally require some of their wool to work up with our own; but the weight of a Spanish fleece is no way comparable to that of Lincolnshire or Warwickshire; and in those counties it is no uncommon thing to give a hundred guineas for a ram,

The sheep without horns are counted the best sort, because a great part of the animal's nourishment is supposed to go up into the horns. Sheep like other ruminant animals, want the upper fore-teeth, but have eight in the lower jaw two of these drop, and are replaced at two

years old; four of them are replaced at three years old; and all at four. The new teeth are easily known from the rest by their freshness and whiteness. There are some breeds, however, in England that never change their teeth at all; these the shepherds call the "leathermouthed cattle;" and as their teeth are thus longer wearing, they are generally supposed to grow old a year or two before the rest. The sheep brings forth one or two at a time, and sometimes three or four. The first lamb of an ewe is generally pot-bellied, short, and thick, and of less value than those of a second or third production, the third being supposed the best of all. They bear their young five months; and, by being housed, they bring forth at any time of the year.

But this animal in its domestic state is too well known to require a detail of its peculiar habits, or of the arts which have been used to improve the breed. Indeed, in the eye of an observer of Nature every art which tends to render the creature more helpless and useless to itself may be considered rather as an injury than an improvement; and if we are to look for this animal in its noblest state we must seek for it in the African desert, or the extensive plains of Siberia. Among the degenerate descendants of the wild sheep there have been so many changes wrought as entirely to disguise the kind, and often to mislead the observer. The variety is so great that scarce any two countries has its sheep of the same kind; but there is found a manifest difference in all, either in the size, the covering, the shape, or the horns.

The woolly sheep, as it is seen among us, is found only in Europe, and some of the temperate provinces of Asia. When transported into warmer countries, either into Florida or Guinea, it loses its wool, and assumes a covering fitted to the climate, becoming hairy and rough; it there also loses its fertility, and its flesh no longer has the same flavour. In the same manner, in the very cold countries it seems equally helpless and a stranger; it still requires the unceasing attention of mankind for its preservation; and although it is found to subsist as well in Greenland as in Guinea, yet it seems a natural inhabitant of neither.

Of the domestic kinds to be found in the different parts of the world besides our own, which is common in Europe, the first variety is to be seen in Iceland, Mus covy, and the coldest climates of the north. This, which may be called the Iceland sheep, resembles our breed in the form of the body and the tail, but differs in a very extraordinary manner in the number of the horns, being generally found to have four, aud sometimes even eight, growing from different parts of the forehead. These are large and formidable; and the animal seems thus fitted by Nature for a state of war: however, it is of the nature of the rest of its kind, being mild, gentle, and timid. Its wool is very different, also, from that of the common sheep, being long, smooth, and hairy. Its colour is of a dark brown; and under its outward coat of hair it has an internal covering that rather resembles fur than wool, being fine, short, and soft.

The second variety to be found in this animal is that of the broad-tailed sheep, so common in Tartary, Arabia, Persia, Barbary, Syria, and Egypt. This sheep is only remarkable for its large and heavy tail, which is often found to weigh from twenty to thirty pounds. It sometimes grows a foot broad, and is obliged to be supported by a small kind of board that goes upon wheels. This tail is not covered underneath with wool like the upper part, but is bare; and the natives, who consider it as a great delicacy, are very careful in attending and preserv ing it from injury. Mr. Buffon supposes that the fat which falls into the caul in our sheep goes in these to furnish the tail, and that the rest of the body is from thence deprived of fat in proportion. With regard to their fleeces, in the temperate climates they are, as in our own breed, soft and woolly, but in the warmer lati

tudes they are hairy; yet in both they preserve the enormous size of their tails.

The third observable variety is that of the sheep called "strepsicheros." This animal is a native of the islands of the Archipelago, and only differs from our sheep in having straight horns surrounded with a spiral furrow. The last variety is that of the Guinea sheep, which is generally found in all the tropical climates both of Africa and the East Indies. They are of a larger size with a rough hairy skin, short horns, and ears hanging down, with a kind of dewlap under the chin. They differ greatly in form from all the rest, and might be considered as animals of another kind were they not known to breed with other sheep. These, of all the domestic kinds, seem to approach the nearest to the state of nature. They are larger, stronger, and swifter than the common race, and consequently better fitted for the precarious forest life. However, they seem to rely, like the rest, on man for support-being entirely of a domes tic nature, and subsisting only in the warmer climates. Such are the varieties of this animal which have been reduced to a state of domestic servitude. These are all capable of producing among each other; all the peculiarities of their form have been made by climate and human cultivation; and none of them seem sufficiently independent to live in a state of savage nature. They are therefore to be considered as a degenerate race formed by the hand of man, and propagated merely for his benefit. At the same time, while man thus cultivates the domestic kinds he drives away and destroys the savage race, which are less beneficial and more headstrong. These, therefore, are to be found in but very small number, in the most uncultivated countries, where they have been able to subsist by their native swiftness and strength. It is in the more uncultivated parts of Greece, Sardinia, Corsica, and particularly in the deserts of Tartary, that the moufflon is to be found that bears all the marks of being the primitive race, and which has been actually known to breed with the domestic animal.

The mouffion, or musmon, though covered with hair, bears a stronger similitude to the ram than to any other animal; like the ram it has the eyes placed near the horns; and its ears are shorter than those of the goat; it also resembles the ram in its horns, and in all the particular contours of its form. The horns also are alike; they are of a yellow colour; they have three sides, as in the ram, and bend backwards in the same manner behind the ears; the muzzle and inside of the ears are of a whitish colour tinctured with yellow; the other parts of the face are of a brownish grey. The general colour of the hair over the body is of a brown, approaching to that of the red deer. The inside of the thighs and belly are of a white tinctured with yellow. The form upon the whole seems more made for agility and strength than that of the common sheep; and the moufflon is actually found to live in a savage state, and maintain itself either by force or swiftness, against all the animals that live by rapine. Such is its extreme speed, that many have been inclined rather to rank it among the deer kind than the sheep. But in this they are deceived, as the musmon has a mark that entirely distinguishes it from that species, being known never to shed its horns. In some these are seen to grow to a surprising sizemany of them measuring in their convolutions above two ells long. They are of a yellow colour, as was said; but the older the animal grows the darker the horns become: with these they very often maintain very furious battles between each other; and sometimes they are found broken off in such a manner that the small animals of the forest creep into the cavity for shelter. When the musmon is seen standing on the plain his fore-legs are always straight, while his hinder-legs seem bent under him; but in cases of more active necessity this seeming deformity is removed, and he moves with great swiftness

and agility. The female very much resembles the male of this species, but that she is less, and her horns also are never seen to grow to that prodigious size they are of in the wild ram. Such is the sheep in its savage state-a bold, noble, and even beautiful animal; but it is not the most beautiful creatures that are always found most useful to man. Human industry has therefore destroyed its grace to improve its utility.

THE GOAT, AND ITS NUMEROUS VARIETIES.-There are some domestic animals that seem as auxiliaries to the more useful sorts, and which, by ceasing to be the first, are considered as nothing. We have seen the services of the ass slighted because they are inferior to those of the horse; and in the same manner the services of the goat are held cheap because the sheep so far exceeds it. Were the horse or the sheep removed from Nature the inferior kinds would then be invaluable, and the same arts would probably be bestowed in perfecting their kinds that the higher order of animals have experienced. But in their present neglected state they vary but little from the wild animals of the same kind; man has left them their primitive habits and forms; and the less they owe to his assiduity the more they receive from Nature.

The goat seems in every respect more fitted for a life of savage liberty than the sheep. It is naturally more lively, and more possessed with animal instinct. It easily attaches itself to man, and seems sensible of his caresses. It is also stronger, swifter, more courageous, and more playful-lively, capricious, and vagrant; it is not easily confined to its flock, but chooses its own pastures, and loves to stray remote from the rest. It chiefly delights in climbing precipices-in going to the very edge of danger; it is often seen suspended upon an eminence hanging over the sea upon a very little base, and even sleeps there in security. Nature has in some measure fitted it for traversing these declivities with ease: the hoof is hollow underneath, with sharp edges, so that it walks as securely on the ridge of a house as on the level ground. It is a hardy animal, and easily sustained; for which reason it is chiefly the property of the poor, who have no pastures with which to supply it. Happily, however, it seems better pleased with the neglected wild than the cultivated fields of Art; it chooses the heathy mountain or the shrubby rock; its favourite food is the tops of the boughs, or the tender bark of young trees; it seems less afraid of immoderate heat, and bears the warm climates better than the sheep. It sleeps exposed to the sun, and seems to enjoy its warmest fervours. Neither is it terrified at the storm or incommoded by the rain: immoderate cold alone seems to affect it, and is said to produce a vertigo, with which this animal is sometimes troubled. The inconstancy of its nature is perceivable in the irregularity of its gait; it goes forward, stops, runs, approaches, flies, merely from caprice, and with no other seeming reason than the extreme vivacity of its disposition.

There are proofs of this animal's being naturally the friend of man; and that the goat seldom resumes its primeval wildness when once reduced into a state of servitude. In the year 1698, an English vessel happening to touch at the islands of Bonavista, two Negroes came and offered the sailors as many goats as they chose to take away. Upon the captain's expressing his astonishment at this offer, the Negroes assured him that there were but twelve persons on the island, and that the goats were multiplied in such a manner as even to become a nuisance; they added, that instead of giving any trouble to catch them, they followed the few inhabitants that were left with a sort of obstinacy, and were importunate with their tameness.

The goat produces but two at a time, and three at the most; but in the warmer climates, although the animal degenerates and grows less, yet it becomes more fruitful,