142 SHEEP.
multiplicity of horns is not found in any breed intrinsically of much value. It is generally accompanied by great length and coarseness of the fleece, and which, in the majority of these cases, assumes more the form of hair than of wool[1].
SICILIAN SHEEP.
An account, extracted from the earliest poet, has already been given of the supposed primitive management of the sheep in Sicily (pages 48, 49). A valuable breed of sheep is still found in this island, and, with regard to which, the same system of migration is pursued as in the Spanish flocks; but the wool is far inferior to that of the Merino. Livingston imagines that they are descendants from the stock of the ancient shepherds, and which had undergone all the improvement of which that race of animals was capable when Sicily was in its highest state of civilization[2].
ITALIAN SHEEP.
When Rome was in the zenith of her glory, the sheep of Italy seemed to be worthy of the soil on which they fed. "The best wool, of all others," says Pliny, "is that of Apulia (on the south of Naples); then that which in Italy is called the Greek sheep's wool, but in other countries is named the Italian (still more to the south, being that part of Italy which was particularly colonised by the Greeks). The Milesian (Asiatic) sheep and wool carry the third prize. The wool of Apulia is of a very short staple, and especially in request for cloaks and mantles about Tarentum (Taranto) and Canusium (Canosa); and as for whiteness, there is none better than that which groweth along the Po and in Lombardy[3]."
If we are to credit the accounts of ancient authors, the Italian sheep and the Italian wool were cultivated with a care and assiduity which leaves all the precautions of modern times far behind. The reason of this was plain. The clothing of the richest and most refined people then in the world was at first made of wool: but at length the silk and cotton of the East gradually introduced themselves into Europe, and the Italians found the fabrics composed of these materials to be better adapted to the heat of the climate in which they lived. The consequence was that sheep began to be cultivated more for the carcass and less for the fleece; and the breeds of Apulia and Tarentum were rapidly deteriorated, and at length disappeared, and were succeeded by a larger, coarser, and hardier, but, under the altered circumstances, more profitable race[4].
When, after the middle ages of darkness were passing away, the arts and manufactures again revived, Italy took the lead in the production of the
- ↑ Mariti's Travels in Cyprus, vol. i., pp. 35, 225. Anderson on Sheep, p. 41.
- ↑ The argument by which he enforces this opinion is at least a very ingenious one. "Those," (the sheep of Sicily,) "with most of the sheep I have seen in Italy, have pendent ears. From this circumstance I presume that they have been longer domesticated than those of Spain or the other parts of Europe; and as this country was originally settled by the Grecians, it is highly probable that the present race is from the stock of the first colonists: for, extraordinary as it may appear, notwithstanding the various changes which that country has undergone, its agriculture seems at the present to be what the poets describe it to have been two thousand years ago, and the implements of husbandry dug up at Pompeii and Herculaneum are evidently the models of those now in use in the vicinity of Naples.
"I consider pendent ears as a proof of very ancient domesticity, because I believe all wild animals carry theirs erect; and most, if not all of them, have the power of moving them to the point from which the sound is derived. When they cease to be their ⟨own⟩ protectors, and rely upon man both for defence and support, the organs given them with a view to these objects are gradually impaired, and the debility which results from their inaction changes their very form."—Livingston on Sheep, p. 44. - ↑ Plin. Secund., lib. viii., cap. 48.
- ↑ Bath Papers, vol. ii., p. 216.
