wool on their foreheads, and speckled and spotted 

 legs: so that you would think that the flocks of 

 Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and 

 the variegated breed of his son-in-law Jacob were 

 cantoned along on the other. And this diversity 

 holds good respectiv^ely on each side from the val- 

 ley of Brambler and Deeding to the eastward, and 

 westward all the whole length of the downs. If 

 you talk with the shepherds on this subject, they 

 tell you that the case has been so from time im- 

 memorial ; and smile at your simplicity if you ask 

 them whether the situation of these two different 

 breeds might not be reversed? However, an in- 

 telligent friend of mine near Chichester is de- 

 termined to try the experiment, and has this au- 

 tumn, at the hazard of being laughed at, introduced 

 a parcel of black-faced hornless rams among his 

 horned western ewes. The black-faced poll-sheep 

 have the shortest legs and the finest wool. 



[The sheep on the downs in the winter of 1769 

 were very ragged, and their coats much torn ; the 

 shepherds say they tear their fleeces with their owm 

 mouths and horns, and they are always in that way 

 in mild wet winters, being teased and tickled with a 

 kind of lice. 



After ewes and lambs are shorn, there is great 

 confusion and bleating, neither the dams nor the 

 young being able to distinguish one another as 



before. This embarrassment seems not so much to 



204 



