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that we place as boundaries to their rambling hab'Ua, 

 jet how seldom do we see the true cause of their de- 

 termination to set them at defiance. We may partly 

 account for it by considering their analogy to the goat, 

 and their propensity to scale rugged eminences ; but I 

 think these movements rather indicate an anxiety to 

 change a pasture already exhausted of variety, for fresh 

 fields, and herbage abounding in that miscellaneous 

 provision which nature apparently reckons essential for 

 them. Shepherds own as much, and will tell you that 

 frequent change of pasture is the soul of sheep hus- 

 bandry, though they see no reason why sheep should 

 not be kept for many successive weeks on..a patch of 

 turnips. They admit the necessity of a frequent shift- 

 ing in the one case, but deny it in the other. Magendie, 

 a celebrated French physiologist, has shown, by experi- 

 ment, that it is impossible to keep an animal in a healthy 

 state longer than six weeks on one article of diet, death 

 frequently taking place even before the end of that 

 period ; but our sheep-farmers, in happy ignorance of 

 the fact, confine their flocks for months to turnips only. 

 And what, may I ask them, is the consequence of the 

 practice ? Why, that it is not unusual to meet with 

 sheep-owners who lose at least one out of every fifteen, 

 and all owing, as may easily be proved, to this mode 

 of management. In the first place, the turnip is a kind 

 of food entirely foreign to the nature of the sheep, and 

 one to which, at first, they evince great repugnance. 

 There are many varieties of sheep incapable of feed- 

 ing on turnips, owing to the form of the face, the upper- 

 jaw projecting considerably past the lower, hindering 

 the chwel-shaped teeth from being brought to bear upon 



