SHEEP. 
283 
appear to afford milk in more abundance than ours. 
Dr. Van Troil says, they give from two to six 
quarts a day. The fleece is not shorn from the 
sheep in that island, as with us ; about the end 
of May it loosens of itself, and is stripped off at 
once, like a skin. 
The Spanish sheep, remarkable for the fineness 
of their wool, and distinguished by spiral horns, 
bending outwards, are of a breed believed to have 
been originally introduced into that kingdom from 
England. Mention is made, indeed, of two va- 
rieties of Spanish sheep, one of which, the Merino, 
is highly valued for the fineness and quantity of 
the wool ; whereas the fleece of the other is of 
a very inferior quality. A large proportion of 
the flocks in Spain are of the former variety ; and 
the care with which they are managed renders the 
business of the shepherd much more complex in 
Spain than in most other countries. The number 
of these sheep fed in Spain, is above four mil- 
lions. In summer the flocks feed on the moun- 
tains in the northern parts of the kingdom ; in 
winter, they are conducted into the milder plains 
of Estremadura and Andalusia, and distributed 
into districts. A flock consists usually of about 
ten thousand sheep, under the management of a 
bead shepherd, with fifty inferior shepherds, and 
as many dogs. In summer, the sheep are made 
to’eat a great quantity of salt. The rams are, as 
is usual in other places, kept in separate flocks, 
except during the rutting time. This begins 
about the end of July ; and they are then distri- 
buted among the ewes. The fleece of a ram fre- 
quently weighs above five-and-twenty pounds ; 
that of an ewe scarce ever more than five; hut 
the wool of the ram is not equally fine with that 
of the ewe. In the middle of September the shep- 
herds mark the sheep of their flocks on the loins. 
