50 Mr. Moorcroft's Letter on the Purik Sheep ofLadakh, S^x. 



flavour of its mutton, added to its peculiarities of feeding and constitution, 

 yields not in merit to any race hitherto discovered. Perhaps the dog of 

 the British cottager is not so completely domiciliated, as is the Purik 

 sheep of this country. In the night, it finds shelter either in a walled 

 yard, or under the roof of its master ; and frequently, in the day, picks up 

 its food on a surface of granite rock, where the eye of the cursory enquirer 

 can scarcely discover a speck of vegetation, though closer investigation 

 shews stunted tufts of wormwood, hyssop, bugloss, and here and there a 

 few blades of a dwarfed grass. But the indefatigable industry of this 

 animal detects, and appropriates, substances so minute and uninviting, as 

 would be unseen, or be neglected, by ordinary sheep, or those of larger 

 breeds, even in this country. Almost all the land,* round this capital, is 

 under tillage for wheat and barley, and in lucerne ; but the harvest will 

 not have been two months off the ground, and a single blade of vegetable 

 substance shall not be discovered ; not a stem of stubble, nor a crown of 

 lucerne. The stubble is bitten off by the common cow, the Tho (a hybrid, 

 between the Yak male and the cow), and the shawl-goats ; whilst the ass 

 not only devours the stock of the lucerne ; but, l)y pawing, lays bare the 

 tap-root, of the upper part of which he, generally, gets about three or four 

 inches. 



The Purik sheep, if permitted, thrusts its head into the cooking-pot, 

 picks up crumbs, is eager to drink the remains of a cup of salted and but- 

 tered tea, or broth, and examines the hand of its master for lattro (barley 

 flour), or for a cleanly picked bone, which it disdains not to nibble. A 

 leaf of lettuce, a peeling of a turnip, the skin of an apricot, give a luxury. 

 The coarse black tea of China forms tiie basis of the nourishment of the 

 natives of this misgoverned country ; and its use is conducted with the 

 utmost frugality. Rubbed to a powder, and tied in a cloth, it undergoes 

 the ceremony of frequent boiUngs : and when it has given out the whole of 

 its colouring matter, a process rather tedious (from the Chinese steeping 

 the full-grown leaves in a vat, with infusion of Kat'h, Ext. Cat), the re- 

 siduum falls to the share of the sheep. 



* The salt plains of the valley, in which runs the Sinha-hd-bal, or " River, proceeding from 

 the Lion's Mouth." But these, partly left in natural herbage, contain swamps, abounding, in the 

 autumn, with the Fasciola Hepatica ; which, getting into the gall-ducts, kills the sheep, in winter, 

 that have pastured upon it. 



