1 88 



OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



illlllli*.. .- 





SiiKEP Market in Paris 



made by mixing clotted milk with moistened 

 bread. Between three layers of the curds 

 are placed two layers of bread crumbs, ground 

 to powder. This bread is made expressly of 

 wheat, rye, barley flour, and yeast. The 

 mixture is then pressed into porcelain molds 

 with holes at the sides. Next it is dried and 

 salted in a particular manner and placed to 

 ripen, that is, to mature, in grottoes or caves 

 in the mountains. Thirty or forty days are 

 required to ripen these cheeses, during 

 which time they are covered with a thick 

 mold which has to be frequently removed. 

 The manufacture of this cheese is now in 

 the hands of a corporation. 



VIII. Wool 



In addition to meat and milk for the 

 food of man, fat for soap and candles, bones 

 to make buttons, and skin transformed into 

 parchment, leather, kid gloves, shoes, furni- 

 ture covering, and harness, wool is, and has 

 been from time immemorial, the chief pro- 

 duction of these useful animals. 



The most ancient biblical stories make 

 mention of the shearing of sheep and of the 

 custom of making the occasion a festival 

 coincident with that of the harvest. As we 

 have already seen in treating of the differ- 

 ent races, there is a great difference in the 

 quality of the wool. We may disregard 

 the short fleeces covering head and legs. 

 The long fleeces are divided into two 



qualities, — one of superior 

 solidity and full of marrow, 

 and the other soft, downy, and 

 without marrow. If we exam- 

 ine a thread of wool under the 

 microscope, we find it com- 

 posed of cells which overlap 

 each other like the scales of 

 a fish, and within is a hollow, 

 full of marrow, forming the 

 medullary canal. The coarser 

 the wool the larger the canal ; 

 in vcr)- fine wool it is wholly 

 absent. In some races this 

 marrow canal, which their 

 ancestors certainly possessed and which still 

 predominates in the wild sheep now existing, 

 is completely replaced by a species of down 

 without marrow, a wool which is of far greater 



\'erv Long Fleece 



