122 THE DISEASES AND DISORDEES OP THE OX. 



of these we shall consider in due course. Now, however, we 

 proceed to give a very brief account of the sheep, having 

 gathered some valuable hints from the well-known work on 

 *' Bible Animals/' by that deservedly popular and eminent writer 

 the Rev. J. G. Wood. 



The sheep has been domesticated from the very earliest times^ 

 In reading the Bible narrative we should recollect that the 

 pasture-lands of the East are of very wide extent, very much 

 more so than are the Downs and the Highlands, which m these 

 days afford examples of the mode of sheep-keeping described in 

 the Old Testament. Sir S. Baker, in his work on Abyssinia, 

 depicts a state of things wherein the Arab herdsmen of to-day 

 represent the Israelitish shepherds of old. The Arabs with their 

 goats and sheep gathering round the wells recall the recollec- 

 tion how "Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of 

 the people of the East. And he looked, and behold a well 

 in the field, and lo ! there were three flocks of sheep lying 

 by it," &c. In fact, the present Arab daily life in the Nubian 

 deserts furnishes us with a picture of the past. In the days 

 spoken of in the early Scriptures the necessity of obtaining 

 water always occupied the shepherd's mind. We, living in this 

 climate of England, can scarcely appreciate this anxiety with 

 respect to the supply of water, and we must bear in mind that not 

 only is there a scarcity of this needful fluid, but also that it is far 

 more urgently required than it is in temperate and moist coun- 

 tries. It has been recorded that men have sat down and died of 

 thirst, even when in sight of the river which, had they but pos- 

 sessed the strength to reach it, would have supplied them with 

 the water by which their lives might have been saved. We read 

 in the Bible narrative how Jacob, and how Moses two hundred 

 years after him, performed for maidens tending their fathers' 

 flocks the courteous oSice of drawing the water and pouring 

 it into the sheep-troughs, and how they both married the girls 

 to whose charge the flocks had been in each case entrusted. 

 This brings us to the Oriental custom which has been preserved 

 to the present day. The wells at which the cattle are watered at 

 noon-day are the meeting-places of the tribe, and it is chiefly at 

 the well that the young men and women meet each other. As 

 each successive flock arrives at the well, the number of the people 

 increases, and while the sheep and goats lie patiently around 



