[9] 



Joseph was stolen and sold to the Egyptians by his brethren. 

 Job was also a great and rich man of those early times, 

 being the owner of 14,000 sheep, besides other animals. 

 This was, too, only about eight hundred years after the 

 deluge, so that it is known that sheep were then, as now, 

 very prolific, unless he owned all the sheep of the age. 

 Moses, the great lawgiver, soldier, and prophet, did not dis- 

 claim to tend the flocks of Jethro in the desert of Midian, 

 and still later the sweet singer of Israel, David, the greatest 

 King of the Jews, kept his father's sheep. 



It was to shepherds that the glad tidings of our Saviour's 

 birth were first made known. While in the fields or range, 

 at night, watching the sheep, the glorious company of 

 angels appeared to them, striking their harps, and announc- 

 ing to them the long looked for message of " Glad tidings 

 of great joy," the Saviour is born unto the world. So 

 profound was the joy, they left their flocks, and led by a 

 star sent to them, were guided to the holy spot. Kings and 

 princes prided themselves in the numbers and vastness of 

 their flocks, and the shepherd kings of a later date attained 

 great power. Among them Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, 

 Kubler Khan, and others have attained an everlasting fame 

 as great conquerors of the world. 



We do not have to confine ourselves to the records of 

 holy writ for examples of sheep husbandry. The profane 

 authors, Homer, Horace, Virgil, Herodotus, Plato, and, in 

 fact, all of the great writers of antiquity, speak in endearing 

 terms of sheep. Some of the most delightful pastoral 

 poems of Virgil picture the shepherd watching the sheep 

 and delighting his love with the music of the reeds. The 

 artists, too, have vied with one another in depicting upon 

 the canvass agricultural scenes in which the never failing 

 man sits with crook in hand and sheep around. 



In the Middle Ages the improvement of sheep seems 

 first to have been thought possible. The Asiatics raised 

 them solely or nearly so for food, the warmth of the climate 



