The Farm Livestock of the Period, 269 



facturers also made a lighter clotli, better adapted for a 

 warm country than the more substantial goods exported from 

 England. 



Perhaps, too, the foreigner took more pains with his flock. 

 Swinburne, in his Travels in Italy, relates how it was the 

 ancient custom of the Romans to drive their sheep out of 

 Apulia into Samnium, where a proper allotment of summer 

 pasturage awaited them. This practice, abandoned after the 

 ruin of the Roman Empire, had been revived by Alphonsus, 

 first king of Naples, who engaged to supply native flock- 

 masters with both a fine new breed imported from Spain ^ 

 and good pasturage on perpetual leases for the seven summer 

 months,^ The flocks were allowed to pass to and fro free of 

 tolls and dues, and were under special State protection during 

 transit. The owners were furnished with materials for huts 

 and folds at reasonable prices on credit; and if the supply 

 of pasture lands failed, the State bought more. So successful 

 was the enterprise that the numbers transported in this 

 manner during one year had been computed at one million 

 two hundred thousand sheep.^ 



This same practice lingered on in Spain long after the 

 renewal of warfare had put an end to it on the Italian 

 peninsula. The most extraordinary care was bestowed on 

 their flocks by the Spanish shepherds, each of whom was 

 accompanied by his great wolf-dog, armed with spiked collars, 

 and able to cope even with bears. Their first business on 

 arriving at the summer pasturage ^ was to afford the ewes as 

 much salt as they could eat. This was placed on flat stones 

 at intervals of twenty feet, and, at stated periods during the 

 season, the flock was driven slowly between them, in this way 

 each sheep being supposed to absorb as much as 1| lbs. in 



* Descendants probably of those sheep presented by the English King 

 Edward. 



^ The pasturage of Apulia, probably of all the Neapolitan States, was 

 Crown property, so w^e are told by Young in his Annals. 

 ' Gentleman's Magazine, January 10, 1790. 



* The mountain pasturage of Catalonia and other provinces was the 

 property of the villages, and managed by a vestry. — Annals of Agri- 

 culture, vol. viii. p. 194. 



