THE COMMON SHEEP. 509 



" moralised this spectacle/' mentions it as a remarkable instance 

 of the reasoning faculty among sheep. The age of a sheep is 

 known by the teeth ; a sheep, two years old, is called a hog ; 

 an emasculated ram is called a wether ; and an old ewe, who has 

 lost her teeth, is termed a crone. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, 

 mentions an ewe which died of old age in her seventeenth 

 year. 



In many foreign countries the flesh of the sheep is not eaten, 

 or only to a small extent ; but in Britain the consumption 

 of it, either as mutton or as lamb, is very considerable. It was 

 the milk of the ewe, rather than of the cow, which was drunk 

 in ancient times ; and cheese was made from it at a very early 

 epoch, and is still made from it in Greece, in Wales, and in 

 some remote parts of the Scottish Highlands. In Arabia, 

 Barbary, the Levant, and in Iceland, butter is made from ewe's 

 milk, which will yield more butter than will an equal quantity 

 of milk from either the cow, the goat, the mare, or the ass. 

 When ewe's butter becomes scarce in Iceland, the general sub- 

 stitute is sheep's tallow, and the children are said to be so fond 

 of the latter substance, that they may be seen eating lumps of 

 it as though it were barley-sugar. The skin in our own country 

 is prepared into leather, chiefly employed in the manufacture 

 of gloves and in book-binding j and the wool is an article of 

 vast importance, from its very extensive use in the manufacture 

 of various kinds of cloth and blankets. In Devonshire and 

 Cornwall, the wool is not washed previous to clipping, as in the 

 upper counties, consequently a much larger proportion of animal 

 oil, or what is called yolk in the former county, passes off in 

 the manufacturer's wash -pans, intermixed with soap-suds ; and 

 where the business is very extensive, an immense quantity can 

 be procured, varying from to ten or twenty to one hundred 

 hogsheads per week j and the benefit arising from it, as a 

 manure, properly applied, is incalculable, as it is equal, if not 

 superior, to any farm-yard compost that can be obtained in the 

 usual way. Sheep's dung is also a warm manure for top- 

 dressings. 



