SHEEP, 
281 
instantly scour away with great agility, always 
seeking the steepest and most inacessible parts of 
the mountains. 
It is very singular that in the holms round Kirk- 
wall; in the island of Mainland, one of the Ork- 
neys, if any person about the lambing time enters 
with a dog, or even without, the ewes suddenly 
take fright, and through the influence of fear* it 
is imagined, instantly drop down dead, as though 
their brain had been pierced with a musket-ball. 
Those that die in this manner are commonly said 
to have two,, and sometimes three lambs within 
them. 
The fleeces of the sheep above Cairo are very 
thick and long. The skins are used by most of 
the Egyptians for beds ; since, besides their being 
very soft, it is said that in sleeping on them per- 
sons are secured from the stings of scorpions, which 
never venture upon wool, lest they should be en- 
tangled in it. These fleeces are (as at present is 
done in some parts of England) taken off entire, 
and one of them, long and broad enough to serve 
a man as a mattrass, was sold as high as twenty 
shillings sterling, whilst the whole animal alive, 
and without its fleece, only brought about six 
shillings. 
There are in the voices of all animals innumer- 
able tones, perfectly understood by each other, and 
entirely beyond our powers of discrimination. It 
should seem somewhat remarkable thatthe ewe can 
always distinguish her own lamb, and the lamb its 
mother, even in the largest flocks ; and at the time 
of shearing, when the ewes are shut up in a pen 
from thedambs, and turned loose one by one as they 
are shorn, it is pleasing to see the meeting between 
each mother and her young one. The ewe imme- 
diately bleats to call her lamb, which instantly 
obeys the well-known voice, and, returning the 
VOX,. II, © o 
