Page:Sheep.djvu/18

 2                         SHEEP.

be reduced to a few kemps (coarse hairs), or got rid of altogether; and finally, the pelt or skin of the goat has a thickness very far exceeding that of the sheep.

Agriculturists have applied different names to the sheep according to its sex and age.

The male is called a ram or tup. While he is with the mother he is denominated a tup or ram-lamb, a heeder; and in some parts of the west of England, a pur-lamb. From the time of his weaning, and until he is shorn, he has a variety of names : he is called a hog, a hogget, a hoggerel, a lamb-hog, a tup-hog, or a teg; and, if castrated, a wether hog. After shearing, when probably he is a year and a half old, he is called a shearing, a shearling, a shear-hog, a diamond or dinmont ram, or tup; and a shearing wether, &c., when castrated. After the second shearing he is a two-shear ram, or tup, or wether; at the expiration of another year he is a three-shear ram, &c.; the name always taking its date from the time of shearing.

In many parts of the north of England and Scotland he is a tup-lamb after he is salved, and until he is shorn, and then a tup-hog, and, after that, a tup, or if castrated, a dinmont or a wedder.

The female is a ewe, or gimmer lamb, until weaned; and then a gimmer hog, or ewe hog, or teg, or sheeder ewe. After being shorn she is a shearing ewe or gimmer, sometimes a theave, or double-toothed ewe or teg; and afterwards, a two-shear, or three-shear, or a four or six-tooth ewe or theave. In some of the northern districts, ewes that are barren, or that have weaned their lambs, are called eild or yeld ewes.

The age of sheep is not reckoned from the time that they are dropped, but from the first shearing, although the first year may thus include fifteen or sixteen months, and sometimes more.

When there is doubt about the age of a sheep, recourse is had to the teeth, for there is even more uncertainty about the horn in horned sheep than there is in cattle; and ewes that have been early bred from, will always, according to the rings on the horn, appear a year older than others that, although of the same age, have been longer kept from the ram.

It has already been stated, that sheep have no teeth in the upper jaw, but the bars or ridges of the palate thicken as they approach the fore part of the mouth ; there also the dense, fibrous, elastic matter of which they are constructed, becomes condensed, and forms a cushion or bed that covers the convex extremity of the upper jaw, and occupies the place of the upper incisor or cutting teeth, and partially discharges their function. The herbage is firmly held between the front teeth in the lower jaw and this pad, and thus partly bitten, and partly torn asunder. The nodding motion of the head of the sheep is a sufficient proof of this.

This animal is one of those especially destined to support man with his flesh; and that he may be able to do this with the least possible expenditure of food, and to extract the whole of the nutriment which the herbage contains, a provision common to all ruminants (as will hereafter be more fully explained) is made in the construction of the stomachs, and other parts of the digestive apparatus. As the first process by which the food is prepared for digestion, it is macerated for a considerable time in the paunch. The frequent and almost necessary consequence of the long continuance of the food in this stomach, exposed to the united influence of heat and moisture, will be the commencement of fermentation and decomposition, and the extrication of a considerable quantity of injurious gas. This often takes place, and many sheep are destroyed by the distension of the paunch caused by this extrication of gas. The process of fermentation