and Extension of the Merino Breed of Sheep. 349 



which, deceived, as they say, by its appearance, allows the stranger to suck her. 

 This operation they repeat three or four times in twenty-Ioiir hours; and, by the 

 Dcxt day, the animals generally take to each other of themselves. When the ewe is 

 not readily deceived, and is in consequence refractory, they reduce her to order by 

 tying her by the leg to a stake. The lambs continue to suck till the flock com- 

 mences its journey to the mountains, which is when they are about five months old. 



Very few, perhaps none, of the ram lambs are castrated. The wethers above- 

 mentioned are rams, cut at the age of six or seven years, when no longer fit for pro- 

 pacjaiion. The mutton which they yield must, of course, be very bad. In fact, this 

 breed is rarely eaten except by the shepherds themselves, or others connected with 

 the flock; and by them usually in the mountains. So Hide, indeed, are these sheep 

 considered as an article of food, that though immense flocks of them pass through 

 or near Madrid twice every year, the beef and pork of that capital are supplied 

 from the neat cattle and pigs of France, and the mutton from the sheep of Africa, 



Duiing the winter, the Merino flocks cover the plains of some of the warmest 

 atid most fertile provinces of Spain. Such are Valentia, Murcia, Arragon, Castile, 

 La Mancha, Andalusia, Estremadura, the neighbourhood of Cadiz, &c. The 

 herbage of these countries, which had been burnt up during the summer, begins to 

 re-appear on the first autumnal rains; after which it pushes so rapidly, and acquires 

 such a degree of luxuriancy, that the shepherds are often obliged to fold their 

 flocks, which ihey do by means of nets, in order to prevent their injuring them- 

 selves by feeding too hastily. Thus the herbage continues to shoot more or less 

 during the whole winter. But as soon as, from the increasing heat of the sun and 

 the constant consumption, the feed begins to fail, which takes place from the middle 

 of April to the beginning of May, the flocks commerce their journey to the moun- 

 tains of Leon, Castile, Arragon, Navarre, Gallicia, Soria, Segovia, Cuen9as, Alba- 

 razin, Burgos, the Asturias, &c. The tops of many of these mountains are in the 

 winter covered with snow, but, in the summer, enjoy only a refrpshing coolness, 

 and are well clothed with short herbage, admirably suited to the animals which they 

 are destined to support. This herbage, according the author of the Oryctograpliia 

 et Zoologia Arragoniae,* chiefly consists of Fesiiica cvina (sheep's fescue), Aira 

 cristata (crested hair-grass], Trifolium repens (white trefoil), and Medicago lupulina 

 (melilot snail-shell). 



• Page 60. 



