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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.

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.

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 ."

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.

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