214 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



air, and lives on milk and the coarsest food. He leads his 

 fleecy herds to fountains, clambers with them up mountains, and 

 beguiles his lonely hours with his wooden horn, and shelters the 

 ewes from the rays of a burning sun, lest the lambs be scrimped 

 in milk which scantily flows from mothers grazing on the hot, 

 arid plains of Apulia. 



In southern Italy a cheese is made from the mixed milk of 

 sheep and goats. It enters into the diet of hardy inliabitants in 

 wild mountain districts, and it is needless to say that the article 

 has a bad flavor, and is very coarsely manufactured. When the 

 milk of the cows, goat and sheep are mixed, the cheese has a rich 

 flavor, and is much admired by epicureans. About the beginning 

 of chestnut harvest, which falls in November, the flocks leave 

 the mountains and graze on the plains below. The Moremmas in 

 winter graze thousands of heids. The herbage is always green 

 and tender, and all nature is joyful except man, who is assailed 

 on every side by disease and death. Few countries in Europe, 

 except Spain, and Silicia, and Hungary, have more extensive 

 sheep-walks than southern and even northern Italy. The pre- 

 sent flocks are but the degenerate progeny of that fine race of 

 Roman sheep that were fed on the plains of Apulia and Calabria, 

 and more especially white wooled sheep that were reared on the 

 Po. One that is acquainted with classical history knows that the 

 old Eomans excelled in raising fine wooled sheep,and their rustic 

 writers have entered into details in giving the process by which 

 it was brought about. They even covered the bodies of the ani- 

 mal in linen, moistened the filaments with wine, and soaked them 

 with oil, in order to produce a delicate staple. The wives and 

 sisters of the Emperor prided themselves on the dexterous man- 

 agement of the spindle and loom. We believe the Merino race 

 of Spain are but a progeny of the Oves molles, or the soft-wooled 

 sheep of the ancient masters of the world. Be that as it may, 

 the modern wool-growers expose, in the same country, the sheep 

 to the direct influence of the weather, but it seems the ancients 

 had a good reason for clothing the sheep from December to April, 

 and were amply rewarded for this extra labor in the manifest 

 superiority of the staple. . The present races of sheep of this land 

 have either a fine or coarse fleece, and their carcass makes very 

 inferior mutton, which will sell the lowest of all animal food. 

 The Alpine Ibex {capree Ibex) still feeds on the solitary slopes 

 of the Alps. These often descend to the cultivated regions, and 

 mingle with the domesticated goats fi-om which springs a healthy 



