139 
Cannibal Sheep, 
The translators of the Bible could not well be ex¬ 
pected to give names to animals with which they were 
not themselves acquainted, but by the substitution of the 
names of species other than those originally intended 
they are responsible for many false notions respecting 
natural history. 
There appears to have been in the time we are 
studying great discontent at the number of 
Sheep kept, to the exclusion of other farm Sheep * 
produce. In The Briefe Coneeipt of English Bolide, by 
W. Stafford, a husbandman complains that— 
“ the sheepe is the cause of all these mischieves; for they have 
driven husbandry out of the countrey, by the which was increased 
before all kinde of victuals, and now all together sheepe, sheepe, 
sheepe. It was farre better when there were not onely sheepe ynough, 
but also oxen, kine, swyn, pig, goose, and capon, egges, butter, and 
cheese: yea, and breade corne, and inalte come ynough besides, reared 
altogether upon the same lande,” (Harleian Miscellany , vol. ix. 
p. 149.) 
The British farmer is somewhat given to grumbling, but 
that this complaint was general we may gather from 
Fuller’s Worthies :— 
“In Warwickshire the complaint of J. Bous continueth and in- 
creaseth, that sheep turn cannibals, eating up men, houses, and 
towns; their pastures make such depopulation. But, on the other 
side, it is pleaded for these enclosures, that they make houses the 
fewer in this county, and the more in the kingdom.” (Yol. ii. p. 402.) 
The small outlay and trouble required by this kind of 
stock, together with the high price of wool, induced a 
great number of landowners to turn their arable lands 
into sheep-runs. Acts passed with the object of diminish¬ 
ing this evil were evaded in every possible way. We 
learn from Mr. J. S. Brewer’s introduction to Starkey’s 
England in the Beiqn of Henry VIII. (Early English Text 
Society, 1871) that— 
“ a single furrow was driven across a field to prove that it was still 
