282 
REIKEVIG. 
with and without horns. Almost every peasant 
has five or six of them, though he can seldom 
preserve the whole through the winter, on ac¬ 
count of the miserably scanty supply of hay, 
which it is alone in their power to collect from 
their pastures, to maintain their stock during the 
long continuance of the season when the ground 
is covered with snow. In years of extreme 
scarcity the poor beasts are fed with dried fish 
cut small ; and the authors of the Voyage en Is- 
lande state it as a fact, that the inhabitants of 
the islands of Breydejiord have even been re¬ 
duced to the necessity of nourishing them with 
dry turf. A cow sells, according to the quantity 
of milk she gives, at from ten to twenty, and 
thirty rix-dollars. 
I have already made mention in one or two 
places of the Icelandic sheep, and have particu¬ 
larly noticed the smallness of their size, and the 
general coarseness of their wool. This latter is 
never shorn, but is either plucked by hand, or 
suffered to fall off in the early part of the sum¬ 
mer. The first wool is extremely fine and short, 
but, as the winter approaches, a longer and 
coarser kind is mixed with it, which is said, 
by writers on Iceland, to be employed in making 
buttons and garters at Copenhagen, and to be 
sold for a manufactory of camel’s hair. The 
