THE COMMON SHEEP. 505 



delicate j a rainy season or a rank pasturage entail upon them 

 many fatal diseases, which soon thin the flock. Most congenial 

 to their nature, is the dry sound pasturage which they find 

 upon the hills and mountains, especially if they afford springs 

 or herbage impregnated with salt, which proves very conducive 

 to their health, and is a great preventive of the rot and of the 

 flukes; or parasitic animals, which too frequently attack their 

 liver. The flocks that feed on and in the vicinity of the syenetic 

 hills of the Cheviot, and on similar pasturage, the shepherds 

 say, may pine but cannot rot.* In the States of La Plata, and 

 in some other parts of South America, salt is so very scarce, 

 that when the sheep and cattle discover a pit of clay salt, they 

 rush to it with such eagerness that many of them are sometimes 

 crushed to death in the struggle to obtain it. Every farmer 

 ought to keep in his sheep pastures a tank containing salt and 

 water, or have a large dry lump of salt in a box or trough 

 placed under shelter from the rain. The sheep will resort to 

 the tank or the trough whenever their digestive organs require 

 the stimulus of salt. The saline particles carried by the winds 

 over the downs near the sea, greatly contribute to the thriving 

 condition of the flocks which feed thereon. 



" In the north of England, where sheep are the principal live 

 stock, many a farmer keeping from one to four thousand, the 

 greater portion have to remain in his enclosures, or on the 

 lower ranges of the adjacent mountain-land, during the winter, 

 endeavouring to procure a scanty subsistence among the heath, 

 the rushes, and the bent grass, in the best way they are able. 

 But when the snow lies deep, and the weather is very severe, 

 they would starve were they not supplied with a little hay from 

 the homestead. The hay is usually borne on the heads or 

 backs of the shepherds, in bundles as large as they can possibly 

 wade through the snow with ; but occasionally on the backs 

 of horses, when practicable. It very generally happens that 

 the places to which the sheep have resorted, to shelter themselves 



* The long-wooled Leicestershire sheep are said to be more subject to the 

 rot than the hardier breeds. 



