year, so that the age of a ram may be known by the number of rings. The ewes have commonly no horns, but only a protuberance in place of them. The horn is supported by, and serves to cover, a highly vascular prolongation of the frontal bone, and it is at its root, where large vessels, and nervous filaments are entering, that blows occasion so great agony to the animal, apart from the damage which the other bones sustain by the infliction of violence on so powerful a level.

(20.) Structure of the Stomach.—The term ruminating, indicates the power possessed by this animal, in common with many others, of masticating its food a second time, by returning it to the mouth after a short maceration. This they are enabled to do, from the structure of the stomachs, or, more correctly speaking, stomach; as anatomists have now concluded, from all animals being constructed on one common principle, that ruminating animals are not possessed of four stomachs, as formerly supposed, but only of one, which they view as being divided into four compartments. In drawing precise conclusions, we are bound only to admit the existence of two compartments, the other two belonging properly to the gullet; and being equivalent to the cheek pouches of monkeys, or the crop and membranous stomach of birds, may be viewed as an apparatus designed to serve a nearly similar purpose (that of moistening and macerating the food); while the real stomach will cease to excite wonder, or puzzle the ignorant, on being contrasted with that of other animals, in many of which a division exists, and from which even the human stomach, though generally a single sac, is not always exempt,—Dr Knox, of Edinburgh, being in possession of one that resembles a pair of small globes joined by a narrow tube, and which, when taken from the body of a person who was advanced in life, bore every mark of soundness in texture, and must, therefore, have been congenital.

(21.) Digestion.[3]—The food descends by the gullet after being partially crushed, into what is called the first stomach, or paunch, in Latin, rumen, or ingluvies, in which cavity are found those morbid concretions so much, and so superstitiously, prized in the Eastern world, under the name of Bezoar stones; from this it passes into the second, termed bonnet, king's hood, or honey-comb, in Latin reticulum, which is much smaller than the other, and receives its name from the inner coat being arranged into cells; here it is moistened, made into pellets, and, while the animal is at rest, impelled by the antiperistaltic motion of the tube to the mouth, and after undergoing a complete mastication, is returned through the gullet to the third stomach, or smallest compartment, which goes under the name of omasum, or many-plies, from its resembling a rolled up hedgehog, and sometimes from the longitudinal laminæ of its mucous membrane that of leaflet. The food remains but a short time in the omasum, proceeding into the fourth division, or obomasum, which in its structure, especially in that of the mucous, or inner membrane, is nearly allied to the same organ in the human being, and is, by the French, from its power of coagulating milk, called caillette. The last compartment is the largest of the four, so long as the animal continues to live on milk; but the paunch speedily surpasses it in magnitude when grass becomes the sole provision. The milk always passes at once into the fourth stomach, there being no reason why it should be returned.

The intestinal canal is long, commencing at the pylorus or lower opening of the stomach, and averaging from ninety to one hundred feet. There are but few enlargements in the great intestines. The fat, like that of all ruminating animals, becomes, on cooling, hard and brittle.

(22.) Period of Conception.—In this climate, ewes fed on good pastures admit the ram in August; but September or October is the time when such would occur if left to nature. They go with young five months, and in warm climates bring forth thrice a-year; but in Britain, France, and most of Europe, they do so only once. They give milk for seven or eight months; live ten or twelve years; and if well managed, are capable of bringing forth during life, though generally useless for that process after the seventh or eighth year. The ram lives from twelve to fourteen years, though instances are recorded of their enduring till twenty, and becomes unfit for propagating at eight.

(23.) Names applied to Sheep.—The age of sheep is never dated from the time that they are dropped, as that would be attended with many inconveniences, but from the time that they are first subjected to the shears, by which means the first year includes a period of at least fifteen or sixteen months.

The following is a condensed arrangement of the names by which sheep are designated at different periods of their existence, in various parts of England and Scotland:—

And so on, the name always taking its date from the time of shearing. Broken-mouthed ewes are called crones in Suffolk and Norfolk; kroks, or crocks, in Scotland; and drapes in Lincolnshire. In Scotland, ewes which are neither with lamb, nor giving milk, are said to be eild, or yield.

CHAPTER II.

WOOL.

(24.) Wool-Bearing Animals.—In most dictionaries wool is defined as the fleece of sheep, as if, in fact they were the only animals which yield it, than which nothing can be more erroneous; since we are assured by the ablest naturalists, that almost every animal, from the butterfly up to man, possesses more or less of this covering, and that some indeed rival the sheep in the quantity they bear.

Though wool is possessed in considerable quantity by carnivorous animals, especially bears, yet the herbivorous quadrupeds, never to mention the sheep, are principally noticed for its growth, and for affording a commodity which becomes an article of profit in the hands of some tribes. Heriot, in his travels through Canada, remarks, that "the savage women manufacture thread of the wool of the buffalo, and weave it into cloth. Most parts of the body are invested with a dusky wool, which is of a quality extremely fine—is much valued—and can with great facility be used in manufactures. The quantity usually contained on one skin is about eight pounds."

So far from the sheep being invariably a