THE MOUNTAIN BREEDS 69 



quiet, of faithfulness and almost religious devotion 

 to duty. The old steward of the farm had lived 

 there in that capacity for 50 years. His son and 

 grandson worked on the farm. High upon the slope 

 just below the plantation of fir wood, stood a low 

 stone cottage beaten with rain and wind, where 

 lived the faithful old shepherd and his son, and just 

 above this cottage began a great mountain pasture, 

 enclosed by stone walls, where there were bits of 

 moors from which peat was dug, and great slopes of 

 heather, which is a small, fine and dense-growing 

 bush on which sheep can subsist. Would that we 

 could implant upon our own soil some such spirit 

 as pervaded this place, the quiet and peace, the sim- 

 ple living and high, manly thinking, the honesty and 

 devotion to duty ! 



THE TUNIS AND PERSIAN SHEEP. 



In Asia and Africa began the first civilization, 

 and there perhaps began the first domestication of 

 the sheep. It is a curious fact that we do not now 

 know whence came the ancestors of our various 

 breeds of sheep, nor do we know certainly whether 

 they all have a common ancestry, though we may 

 infer that it is so from the fact of their readily in- 

 terbreeding with each other. All of the wild breeds 

 of sheep at present have short tails, whereas most 

 domesticated sheep have long tails. It is probable 

 that the wild race from which sprung our flocks of 

 today is extinct. 



However, it is interesting to note what ad- 



