THE RED COW 



Genesis. It might even be shown that we owe much 

 of our civilisation and learning to the care of sheep. 

 Shepherds have been poets since the time of David 

 and earlier, and they have even figured among the 

 rulers of the world. The Biblical patriarchs were 

 all shepherds, and in the history of Egypt we have 

 the Hyksos dynasty the fierce shepherd kings, who 

 ruled, I think, for six hundred years. One has only 

 to let his mind wander over literature and art to 

 realise that man and sheep have been companions 

 from the dawn of history. Pastoral poetry is a dis- 

 tinct branch of literature, and what would landscape 

 painting be without woolly bunches in the middle 

 distance to represent sheep? I understand that it is 

 to the shepherds we owe the sciences of astronomy 

 and algebra, and they have also made contributions 

 to medicine and botany. It was of a shepherd that 

 Touchstone said : "Such an one is a natural philoso- 

 pher." Perhaps the most up-to-date contribution to 

 civilisation that we owe to the shepherds is the an- 

 cient and royal game of golf. It began with the 

 shepherds who whiled away their hours knocking 

 about a woollen ball with their shepherd's crook. 

 Assuredly the sheep will furnish me with an ample 



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