STEEP TRAILS 



ceeds to pull out its feathers, preparatory to 

 making a meal, the hawk may be said to be 

 cultivating the linnet, and he certainly does 

 effect an improvement as far as hawk-food is 

 concerned; but what of the songster? He ceases 

 to be a linnet as soon as he is snatched from 

 the woodland choir; and when, hawklike, we 

 snatch the wild sheep from its native rock, and, 

 instead of eating and wearing it at once, carry 

 it home, and breed the hair out of its wool 

 and the bones out of its body, it ceases to be a 

 sheep. 



These breeding and plucking processes are 

 similarly improving as regards the secondary 

 uses aimed at; and, although the one requires 

 but a few minutes for its accomplishment, the 

 other many years or centuries, they are essen- 

 tially alike. We eat wild oysters alive with 

 great directness, waiting for no cultivation, 

 and leaving scarce a second of distance between 

 the shell and the lip; but we take wild sheep 

 home and subject them to the many extended 

 processes of husbandry, and finish by boiling 

 them in a pot — a process which completes 

 all sheep improvements as far as man is con- 

 cerned. It will be seen, therefore, that wild 

 wool and tame wool — wild sheep and tame 

 sheep — are terms not properly comparable, 

 nor are they in any correct sense to be con- 



14 



