principal grasses are the same in most pastures of the kingdom. There is a difference in the milk of the animal wholly independent of soil and pasturage. It is not the same in richness and taste from one breed as from another; and the better quality of the milk, with greater skill and care in the process to which it is subjected, adequately explain the superiority of the product. Cheddar cheese, made at the village of that name in Somersetshire, and through an extensive range of the county in its vicinity; and the double Gloucester, of the vale of Berkeley, are also celebrated varieties. But the best and richest, commanding the highest price in the market, is the Stilton, so called after a small town of that name in Huntingdonshire. It is somewhat singular, that the cheese which has acquired this name was not originally made at the place, nor is it produced there at present. It was first made at Wymondham, near Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire, which district, as well as the adjoining county of Rutland, is now the principal site of production. It so happened that a relative of the first maker kept the Bell Inn at Stilton, and was supplied with cheese from his dairy. Lying on the great north road, travellers became acquainted with its quality, and not knowing whence it came, originated the name of Stilton cheese. With some of the best cheese that can be produced, England raises some of the worst, as the kind in Suffolk, of which it has been said, that by having a hole made in the centre, a cheese becomes a very good grindstone. Bloomfield describes the product as made of milk "three times skimmed sky blue;" and attributes to it the common virtues of a post,

"Too big to swallow, and too hard to bite."

H

Owing to the general consumption of cheese, the home produce is very great, while there is a large importation from Holland and Belgium. The dairy farms of Cheshire alone number upwards of 90,000 cows, each yielding on an average three hundred weight of cheese in the year, which makes a total annual-quantity of 13,500 tons.

SHEEP.

Flocks of sheep, as well as herds of cattle and horses, were in Britain at the earliest epoch of its history. The animal has ever contributed to the service of men; but it is now useful in various ways unknown to our ancestors, while it was valued by them for a purpose to which it is no longer devoted. In various parts of the country, the custom prevailed of milking the ewes regularly for cheesemaking, to the injury of the lambs. This practice, common with the Greeks and Romans, is noticed in the pages of Homer and Virgil. On account of its flesh and wool, the sheep is one of the most important of man's possessions, the former supplying food, and the latter clothing. It can also be reared in situations and on soils where the other domestic animals could not be supported, while it is so useful as a fertilizer, that the folding of sheep in fields to manure them is very commonly adopted. The numerous breeds we possess are usually ranged in two great groups, distinguished by the different length of the wool, and also by the presence and absence of horns. The long-woolled group includes the Teeswater, Lincoln, New Leicester, Cotswold, and Romney Marsh breeds, all of which are hornless; the short-woolled group comprises the South Down,

Cheviot, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hereford, Norfolk, and Anglo-Merino breeds, with the black-faced or heath breed, and the dun-faced or mountain breed, some of which are horned, and others hornless. The total number of sheep and lambs in the three kingdoms is estimated at more than forty millions; and twelve millions are supposed to be annually slaughtered. In consequence of agricultural improvements, the animal is now so rapidly fattened, that the average duration of life in sheep has been abridged from four or perhaps five years in the last century, to about two years at the present period. The weekly sale of sheep in the London cattle market averages 30,000, which makes a total of 1,560,000 for the twelve months.

Sheep-farming is in general more profitable than the grazing of cattle, as the fleece of the animal is in constant demand for the purposes of the woollen manufacture. The Romans so highly esteemed the wool of the country, and the garments made of it, as to patronise its manufacture. From their time down to a comparatively recently date, domestic woolspinning was the employment of unmarried women of all classes, from the daughter of the prince to the meanest person; and hence the name applied to them, "spinsters," which is still the designation of that large portion of the community, though deprived of its meaning. The wool-harvest, as the gathering of the fleeces may be called, varies in its time in different districts, from the middle of May to the close of July; but the intervening month, June, was personified by the old painters as a sheep-shearer. In rude states of society and early times, the fleeces were obtained by tearing the wool from the back and sides of the animal,

Laban first be

"And

breaking the fibre, or plucking it up by the roots. This barbarous and unjustifiable method lingered latest with us in the Orkney islands, and has not been long discontinued. It was so usual with the Romans, as to originate the word vellus, "fleece," from vello "to pull away;" and the hill where the cruelty was perpetrated received the name of Velleia. But it may be gathered from Scriptural allusions, that sheepshearing, in the proper sense of the phrase, was not unknown in the most primitive ages. came aware that his daughter Rachel had carried off his images when he "went to shear his sheep." there was a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Carmel; and the man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep, and a thousand goats; and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel."* "And Judah was comforted, and went up unto his sheep-shearers to Timnath." If some usages of the olden time in relation to the flocks were cruel, others were most humane, for in cold weather it was customary in Greece and some other countries to provide artificial clothing for the sheep when deprived of their wool. "Even in our own time," says one, “in the mountain ranges of our own island, we remember seeing many an old ewe, or lean 'gimmer,' pasturing on the hillsides with an old woollen garment, or part of an old blanket sewed round their bodies."

The shearing time is the busiest period of the pastoral year. In highland districts, the preliminary washing of the sheep in the bay-like pools of the mountain streams, is one of the most animated of rural spectacles to the town-dwelling traveller, which the scenery arrayed in its summer beauty invests with

*1 Sam. xxv. 2.

+ Gen xxxviii, 12.

great attraction. To the observer of nature it is not a little interesting to mark the demeanour of the animals upon being deprived of their clothing. “He who in shearing time, when the lambs are put up separately from the ewes, witnesses the correct knowledge they have of each other's voices; the particular bleating of the mother just escaped from the shears, and the responsive call of the lamb, skipping at the same moment to meet her; its startled attitude at the first sight of her altered appearance; and the re-assured gambol at her repeated voice and well known smell; he who observes them at these moments will not refuse them as great a share of intelligence as their ancient subjugation, extreme delicacy, and consequent habitual dependence on man, will allow." A festival, second only in its merriment to the harvesthome, was formerly common at the close of this department of pastoral labour.

"The shepherd king,

Whose flock has chanced that year the earliest lamb to bring,

In his gay baldrick sits, at his low grassy board,

With flawns, curds, clouted cream, and country dainties stored."

Nabal, at his sheep-shearing, "held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king." But this custom, like so many other usages of primitive times, has now become nearly obsolete, except in some of the more extensive pastoral districts.

the

The anxious period of the year to the sheep-farmer is the season when the ewes bring forth their young, or the early spring. Should there be snow upon ground, or the nights be frosty, or even cold and rainy, a large loss of the lambs is certain, without the most careful shepherding of the flocks; nor is it altogether avoided with it.