78 THE SHEEP. 



ginning of the eighteenth century, shewing that then the 

 destruction of the great Irish forests was nearly completed. 

 In the place of these verdant Woods, have arisen the dreary 

 Bogs which have covered so great a part of the land with 

 the aspect of desolation, affording fuel, indeed, by the 

 sweat and toil of the miserable inhabitants, but covered 

 with the innutritions plants proper to peat, and affording 

 but a scanty sustenance to the herds and flocks that tenant 

 them. 



The general treatment of the Sheep of the mountainous 

 and peaty tracts of Ireland is rude, in a degree which the 

 breeders of England will find it difficult to credit. Some- 

 times the animals are mixed in common on the peaty moun- 

 tains and flat bogs, where numbers of them perish from 

 want and disease ; and often they spread like wild beasts 

 over the country, stealing what they can obtain : sometimes 

 they are coupled together, and left to find their food as they 

 may, or tethered on patches of grass and rushes, or kept in 

 the miserable cabins of their owners. All over the west of 

 Ireland, from Donegal to Kerry, are to be found half-starved 

 Sheep, either straying in wild flocks, of every age and kind 

 together, or dragging one another in couples along, or fastened 

 where they can find any food. " Our best sort," says Mr 

 Sampson, in his Survey of Londonderry, *' are bought either 

 in the fairs of the south-western counties, or else at Dervock, 

 to which they are driven by jobbers from those pasture 

 counties. I need say nothing of them. Our own strain is 

 of all shapes and qualities, horned and without horns, coarse- 

 woolled and fine ; almost all are humpy-boned and restless. 

 Not long ago, one might see hundreds of Sheep travelling 

 from farm to farm unnoticed and unowned. Every servant 

 boy in the county who had a few shillings saved, laid it out 

 on a Sheep or two, which he let loose on the bounty of Pro- 

 vidence, and the toleration of his neighbourhood. Towards 

 May, all these flocks were driven to the mountains. In the 



