EXTERNAL FOKM. C1X 



The Sheep may be cultivated chiefly for the production of 

 human food, or chiefly for wool for clothing. In this country 

 the Sheep is chiefly cultivated for the former of these pur* 

 poses ; and the same general characters which indicate the 

 facility of fattening readily in the Ox, indicate it in the Sheep. 

 But in producing those characters in the Sheep, there is a 

 class of considerations to which we must pay regard even 

 more than in the case of the Ox, namely, those which relate to 

 health, and the conditions under which the animal is to subsist. 

 The Sheep is subj ect to a multitude of dangerous maladies ; 

 and great losses, extending to the destruction of whole flocks, 

 may result from increasing his fattening properties, at the 

 expense of robustness and general health. In certain cases 

 he is maintained in an artifical state in a country of enclosures, 

 but in others he is compelled to submit to the inclemency of 

 all weathers, and to travel to great distances over the steril 

 mountains, heaths, and downs, which afford him herbage. 

 The same delicacy of form which might adapt him to one 

 condition of external agents might unfit him for another ; 

 and even under the most favourable circumstances, his deli- 

 cacy of form and fattening properties may be increased at 

 the expense of others not less necessary to be taken into 

 the account. 



The Sheep, like the Ox, may be said to stand within a rect- 

 angle ; and the more of the rectangular space his body occu- 

 pies in proportion to his limbs, the better is he fitted for 

 producing a large quantity of muscle and fat in propor- 

 tion to his dimensions. When we look, therefore, for this 

 property alone, we say that in the Sheep, as in the Ox, the 

 body should be large in proportion to the limbs, or, in other 

 words, that the limbs should be short in proportion to the 

 body. 



The head should be relatively small, as indicating that 

 delicacy of the extremities which denotes an animal that 

 readily assimilates his food. The face should be covered 

 with short hair, the channel of the jaws should be wide, the 



