143 
Sheep never drink. 
as a baker’s daughter would bring up a cosset by band, 
and allow it bread and rnilke.” Topsell (p. 640) gives the 
different names applied to a lamb:— 
“ The first year we call it in English a lamb, so the second year a 
hog, lam-hog, or teg if it be a female, the third yeare hoggrils and 
theaves. The common epithits expressing the nature of this beast are 
these: rough, yearling, weake, unripe, sucking, tender, butting, fat, 
milke-eater, merry, sporting, bleating, affable or gentle, field-wanderer, 
horne-bearer, horne-fighter, unarmed, vulgar, wooll-skinned, wooll- 
bearer, wanton, meeke, delicate, and fearefull; and all these are the 
epithets of a male lamb, but of the female I find these following: 
dumb, snow-white, neate, young, fearefull, blacke, tame, humble, and 
tender.” 
Topsell bestows epithets on most of the animals that he 
describes. They are for the most part taken from his 
classical authorities. Dodded, or hornless sheep, were 
considered the most profitable. To Topsell also we are 
indebted for the following information concerning sheep:— 
M There bee man}?- that trouble themselves about this question; 
namely, for what cause the sheep of England do never thirst, except 
they see the water, and then also seldom drink, and yet have we more 
sheep in England then are in any other country of the world, insomuch 
as we thinke it a prodigious thing that sheep should drinke ; but the 
true cause why our English sheepe drinke not is, for there is so much 
dew on the grasse that they need no other water; and therefore 
Aristotle was deceived, who thinketh that the northern sheep had 
more neede of water then the southern. In Spaine those sheep bear the 
best fleeces of wool that drinke least.” (Page 605.) “ The common 
time whereat we sheare sheepe is in June, and lambes in July; the 
quantitie of wool upon our sheep is more then in an}?- other countrey 
of the world, for even the least among us, such as are in hard grounds, 
as in Norfolke, the upper most part of Kent, Hertfort-shier, and other 
places, have better and weightier fleeces then the greatest in other nations. 
The quantitie in the least is a pound, except the sheep have lost his 
wooll, in the middle sort of sheepe two pounds or three pounds, as is 
vulgar in Buckingham, Northampton, and Leicestershieres; but the 
greatest of all in some of those places, and also in Ptumney Marsh in 
Kent, foure or five pounds : and it is the manner of the shepheards and 
sheepe. masters to wet their rams, and so to keepe their wooll two or 
three years together growing upon their backs, and I have credibly 
