LYI.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
153 
other. And this diversity holds good respectively on each side 
from the valley of Brambler and Beeding 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 immemorial; and smile at your simplicity 
if you ask them wdiether the situation of these two different 
breeds might not be reversed ? However, an intelligent friend of 
mine near Chichester is determined to try the experiment, and 
has this autumn, 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 own mouths and horns, and they are 
always in that way in mild wet winters, being teased and 
tickled with a kind of lice. 
After ew^es and lambs are shorn, there is great confusion and 
bleating, neither the dams nor the young being able to distin- 
guish one another as before. This embarrassment seems not so 
much to arise from the loss of the fleece, which may occasion 
an alteration in their appearance, as from the defect of that 
nohis odor, discriminating each individual personally ; which 
also is confounded by the strong scent of the pitch and tar 
wherewith they are newly marked; for the brute creation 
recognize each other more from the smell than the sight ; and 
in matters of identity and diversity appeal much more to their 
noses than their eyes. After sheep have been washed there is 
the same confusion, from the reason given above.] — Observa- 
tions ON Nature. 
As I had hardly ever before travelled these downs at so late 
a season of the . year, I was determined to keep as sharp a 
look-out as possible so near the southern coast, with respect 
to the summer short-winged birds of passage. We make great 
inquiries concerning the withdrawing of the swallow kind, 
without examining enough into the causes why this tribe is 
never to be seen in winter ; for, entire nous, the disappearing 
of the latter is more marvellous than that of the former, 
