SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



497 



tion, communicate that volition of the brain to the different parts of the 

 system, which produces motion. A description of these various nerves, or 

 even an enumeration of them, would be of no practical benefit in a mere 

 popular veterinary treatise. 



The Teeth. — The sheep has 24 molar teeth, ai^d eight incisors. The 

 latter are confined to the lower jaw, being opposed to a firm, hard, elastic 

 pad or cushion on the upper jaw. The incisors are ^ow^e-shaped — i.e., 

 concave without and convex within — which enables the sheep to crop the 

 herbage closer to the ground than our other domestic ruminant, the ox. 



The lamb is born without incisor teeth, or it has but two. In three or 

 four weeks, it has eight small, shortish ones, as represented in fig. 50. — 



Fig. 50. Fig. 51. Fig. 52. - 



Fig. 53. 



Fig. 54. 



Fig. 55. 



When not far from a year old — though sometimes not until fourteen, fif- 

 teen, or even sixteen months old — the two central incisors are shed, and 

 their place is supplied by two longer and broader teeth, as in fig. 51. The 

 sheep is then termed, in this country, a yearling, or yearling past. Two 

 of the " lamb teeth" continue to be annually shed and their places supplied 

 with the permanent ones until the sheep becomes ''full-mouthed.^^ Fig. 

 52 presents the teeth of a two-year-old-past — fig. 53 of a three-year-old- 

 past — fig. 5o of a four-year-old-past. The four-year-old-past is, in reality, 

 nearly or quite five years old, before it obtains its whole number of fully- 

 groicn permanent teeth. The two-year-old and three-year-old also about 

 reach their next year before their additional incisors are fully groivn. — 

 Hence, the English writers all speak of two broad teeth (meaning fully- 

 grown ones) as indicating the age of two years ; four broad teeth, three 

 years ; six broad teeth, four years ; and eight broad teeth, or full-mouthed, 

 five years. I prefer the English arrangement, as more accurate, but the 

 other is the common one in the Northern and Eastern States; and, as it 

 is a matter of little practical consequence, it will here be adhered to. 



Fig. 54 gives an inside view of the incisors of a three-year-old -past — an 

 outside view of which is given in fig. 53. The two remaining lamb teeth 

 are here shown, which in the outside view are concealed by the last pair 

 of permanent teeth. From their being thus concealed, the three is often 

 mistaken for the four-year-old-past, by those who do not count the perma- 

 nent teeth. 



At six years old, the incisors begin to diminish in breadth. At seven 

 they have lo.st their fan-like shape, being equilateral, long, and narrow. — 

 At eight, they are still narrower ; and this year or the next, reversing the 

 flaring or divergent position in which they are shown in fig. ^b, they begin 



(937; :J3 



