A Useful Lesson. 11 



pasture may have tempted to wander away from the main 

 body. The sheep dog of that era bore a greater resemblance 

 to the modern Pyrenean guard dog than it did to the 

 collie of the British Isles as it is known now, and fifty such 

 powerful animals must have proved a formidable pack for 

 the farmer to feed and the shepherds to look after. 



As to feeding these dogs on whey (which Virgil also 

 alludes to in a quotation made earlier in this chapter), barley 

 meal, &c., in order to prevent them acquiring a taste for 

 meat, some of our modern agriculturists might take a lesson. 

 Most of the lamb and sheep worrying that takes place 

 periodically is done by the farmers' own dogs, that have 

 possibly acquired a " taste for mutton " through being 

 allowed to feed upon a dead lamb or sheep which the 

 shepherd has been too lazy or indolent to bury. Or when 

 they have done the latter, possibly so little earth has 

 been placed over the carcases that passing dogs are not 

 prevented smelling them, which, as opportunity affords, 

 scratch up the decomposing filth, filling themselves to 

 repletion thereon. Many good dogs have thus been utterly 

 ruined by the carelessness of their owners ; and when a 

 sheep dog or collie once gets this liking for " mutton," he 

 waits not his turn for a dead sheep, but, prowling out at 

 night time, kills one for himself. Possibly, he carefully 

 covers over the remains of the carcase, to which he will 

 return the following day and continue so to do until the 

 bones are picked, and scraps of wool, blown about by the 

 breeze, remain the only signs of the tragedy which has 

 been enacted. This is a subject which will be returned to 

 later on. 



Dr. Caius, or Keyes, in his u Treatise on Englishe 

 Dogges," already alluded to, and the earliest work on the 



