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of yoke, a certain fign of health) along the back. 
The fame care fhould be ufed in choofing the ram, 
whether for combing or clothing wool. Buy your 
ram a little before fhearing-time, if you can; not at 
any fair or market, but at the farmer’s houfe; for 
then you will fee the ram as he is, without being 
fhorn or trimmed by the /heep-barber, purpofely for 
fale; then you will alfo know the depth, or length, 
of the ftaple; the fhorter, finer, and thicker it is, 
the better for clothing-wool; the longer, thicker, 
‘and finer, the better for combing-wool. As to the 
age of the ram, when to be bought, I am not com- 
petent to decide. Some I have known to buy lambs 
at the cutting feafon; others, two-teeth; others, 
four-teeth. 
As to the ewes, they are rather to be raifed out 
of your own flock, than bought in from elfewhere ; 
as they will be more’ naturalized to the foil, and 
other circumftances peculiar to the farm. 
In fpeaking on the diforders of, fheep, I do not 
pretend to treat of them under the notion of a fheep- 
leech, or doétor, but only by obfervation and en- 
quiry of the fame things, of many different people, 
as farmers, fhepherds, dealers in fheep, and drovers ; 
comparing their accounts together, rejecting fanci- 
ful or improbable narration, and retaining fuch as 
feemed moft agreeable to that analogy which occurred 
to me in reading, or enquiry, concerning the human 
* frame and its difeafes, ufing the hints my informers 
furnifhed 
* - 
