459 



OBSERVATIONS ON QUADRUPEDS. 



SHEEP. 



THE sheep on the downs this winter (1769) are very 

 ragged, and their coats much torn ; the shepherds say 

 they tear their fleeces with their own mouths and horns, 

 and that they are always in that way in mild wet win- 

 ters, being teased and tickled with a kind of lice. 



After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great con- 

 fusion and bleating, neither the dams nor the young 

 being able to distinguish one another as before. This 

 embarrassment seems not so much to arise from the 

 loss of the fleece, which may occasion an alteration in 

 their appearance, as from the defect of that notus odor, 

 discriminating each individual personally; which also 

 is confounded by the strong scent of the pitch and tar 

 wherewith they are newly marked ; for the brute crea- 

 tion recognise each other more from the smell than the 

 sight ; and in matters of identity and diversity appeal 

 much more to their noses than to their eyes. After 

 sheep have been washed there is the same confusion, 

 from the reason given above. 



RABBITS 1 . 



RABBITS make incomparably the finest turf; for they 

 not only bite closer than larger quadrupeds, but they 



1 Having found in a stubble field a rabbit's nest, with young about four 

 days old, which could not see, I had them brought home and given to be 

 suckled to a tame doe which was kept by one of my children, and had 

 young ones which were just old enough to be taken from her. She readily 

 undertook the care of her new charge and reared them. When they came 

 to see, it was observable that they were much more startlish and shy than 

 the young rabbits of tame descent, and as they grew bigger they continued 



