LVI.] 



OF SELBORNE. 



153 



other. And this diversity holds good respectively on each side 

 from the valley of Brambler and Beeding to the eastward, and 

 westward all the whole length of the downs. If you talk with 

 the shepherds on this subject, they tell you that the case has 

 been so from time immemorial ; and smile at your simplicity 

 if you ask them whether the situation of these two different 

 breeds might not be reversed ? However, an intelligent friend of 

 mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment, and 

 has this autumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced 

 a parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his horned western 

 ewes. The black- faced poll-sheep have the shortest legs and 

 the finest wool. 



[The sheep on the downs in the winter of 1769 were very 

 ragged, and their coats much torn ; the shepherds say they tear 

 their fleeces with their own mouths and horns, and they are 

 always in that way in mild wet winters, being teased and 

 tickled with a kind of lice. 



After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great confusion and 

 bleating, neither the dams nor the young being able to distin- 

 guish one another as before. This embarrassment seems not so 

 much to arise from the loss of the fleece, which may occasion 

 an alteration in their appearance, as from the defect of that 

 notus odor, discriminating each individual personally; which 

 also is confounded by the strong scent of the pitch and tar 

 wherewith they are newly marked; for the brute creation 

 recognize each other more from the smell than the sight ; and 

 in matters of identity and diversity appeal much more to their 

 noses than their eyes. After sheep have been washed there, is 

 the same confusion, from the reason given above.] OBSERVA- 

 TIONS ON NATURE. 



As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late 

 a season of the year, I was determined to keep as sharp a 

 look-out as possible so near the southern coast, with respect 

 to the summer short-winged birds of passage. We make great 

 inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, 

 without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is 

 never to be seen in winter ; for, entre nous, the disappearing 

 of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, 



VOL. I. X 



