282 
SHEEP. 
bleat, comes skipping to its dam. At first it fs 
startled by her new appearance, and approaches her 
v/ith some degree of fear, till it has corrected 
the sense of sight by those of smelling and hear- 
ing. 
Even in Britain we have a good many different 
breeds of this animal. Linnaeus distinguishes the 
breed peculiar to England as destitute of horns, 
and having its tail and scrotum depending to the 
knees. This is the fine large breed for which 
Warwickshire, and particularly Lincolnshire is 
noted. They have, in the course of the last 
twenty years, been introduced into Galloway, and 
other parts of Scotland, under the denomination 
of mugg sheep. Their flesh is rather coarse, 
and their wool intermixed with dry hair.— This 
is the hornless sheep of Pennant. 
The northern regions of Europe, particularly 
Gothland and Iceland, afford another variety of 
the sheep, distinguished by having their heads 
furnished with three, four, or even five horns. 
Besides this abundance of horns, the sheep of 
Iceland are remarkable for straight, upright ears, 
and very small tails. In stormy weather, the sheep 
of Iceland, by a sagacious instinct, retreat for 
shelter to the caves and caverns, which are very 
numerous over the face of that island ; but when 
a storm of snow comes on too suddenly to afford 
them time to gain such a retreat, the flock ga- 
ther into a heap, with their heads towards the 
middle, and inclined to the ground ; a, posture in 
which they will remain several days, without 
perishing under the snow. Among the herbs on 
which they feed, the inhabitants of Iceland re- 
mark that scurvy-grass contributes most to fatten 
them. When the summer crop happens to fail, 
the Icelanders are obliged to feed their sheep in 
winter with chopped fish bones. Those sheep 
