NATURAL HISTORY OF SEL.BORNE. 
427 
among them, but the dogs recognised liim by the smell and 
barked at him. 
As many as thirty to forty thousand sheep are sometimes 
assembled at the Carlisle sheep-markets, on a plain known as 
Scars. The shepherds seem to know their sheep by their faces. 
Weather. — Apropos of sheep foretelling sudden changes in 
the weather, I have heard the following: — A Professor, learned 
in meteorology, was examining Stonehenge; a shepherd came 
up and told him if he did not make haste home he would get 
wet through. There being no sign of rain at the time, the 
professor gave him a fee to tell him how he knew. Tie 
answered, " 'Now, ye see that when that old ram rubs his ear 
against yon big stone, I always know it's going to be wet." 
Goats. — Mr. A. Sutherland, who has lived a long time in Cali- 
fornia, informs me that goats are kept in the runs with the shee]), 
the reason being that wlierever goats are, no infection of scab or 
anything else will attack the sheep. In Australia they do not 
use goats, but there is a sheep's scab-inspector, and if any sheep- 
farmer removes his infected sheep to another run he is fined 
50/. for the first offence and 100/. for the second. 
Sheep often resemble goats very much in external appearance. 
My friend, jMr. Wolff, the well-known animal-painter, told me 
that the best test to know the difference between a goat and a 
sheep is that a goat always cocks his tail up in the air, whereas 
a sheep carries it depressed. 
As regards the wild type of goats, " Zoophilus," in Zauf/, 
and Water, remarks that the original parentage of the race of 
tame goats is the Capra Caucasia ; he remarks, that the original 
subjugation of this animal is ante-historical as usual, and the 
numerous representations of goats and sheep on the Nineveh 
sculptures exhibit the breeds of them much as we find them 
still in the same countries. 
Yirgil's Hikundo, p. 156. — My friend, Mr. Edward Karslake, 
writes : — " I agree with White in thinking that ' hirundo ' is 
a swallow, not a martin. It is metaphorically a flying-fish 
— rondine (Jiiricndo- — hirondine — rondine) — dindi according to the 
descriptions of flying-fish which I have read, they turn and twist 
about like a swallow. 
" Virgil would naturally think ' nigra ' a sufficiently accurate 
description as to colour. If you had found fault, he would have 
said, ' I'm a poet, not an ornithologist.' 
It is perhaps a little singular that so accurate an observer as 
