SHEEP. 



BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



PROLOGUE. 



THERE is genuine poetry in pastoral life which it would be 

 sad to lose. Nevertheless, agricultural science and litera- 

 ture are between them rapidly taking the romance out of 

 it. Perhaps we should add, hard times, and the vital im- 

 portance of making things " pay." It is a pity to lose the 

 faculty of discerning the beauty of " the dewy eve and rising 

 moon," or listening as "the amorous thrush concludes his 

 song"; or only to think of the price of mutton and of wool, 

 or of lambs as fore and hind quarters. 



The haunt o' Spring's the primrose brae, 

 The Summer's joy the flocks to follow ; 



How cheerie through the shortening day 

 Is Autumn in her weeds o' yallow ! 



The sweetness of pastoral life is going. It is disappearing 

 under the influence of commercial enterprise, the spread of 

 science, and the difficulties of competition. We ourselves 

 are victims to utilitarianism, and must plead guilty to sharing 

 in the universal want of sentiment, even when " birds rejoice 

 in leafy bowers, and bees hum round the breathing flowers ; " 

 or when " within yon milk-white hawthorn bush, among her 

 nestlings sits the thrush." One is sometimes inclined to 

 wonder if steam power and chemical manures, pedigree stock 

 and iron fencing, weigh-bridges and milk registers, will ever 

 compensate us for the loss of the fresh and simple country 



