ore inhospitable the land on which they feed, the greater
will be their kindness and affection to their young.

"'I once herded,' says the Ettrick Shepherd, 'two years on a wild and
bare farm, called Willenslee, on the border of Mid Lothian; and of all
the sheep I ever saw, these were the kindest and most affectionate to
their lambs. I was often deeply affected at scenes which I witnessed. We
had one very hard winter, so that our sheep grew lean in the spring,
and disease came among them, and carried off a number. Often have I seen
these poor victims, when fallen to rise no more, even when unable to
lift their heads from the ground, holding up the leg to invite the
starving lamb to the miserable pittance that the udder still could
supply. I had never seen aught more painfully affecting.

"'It is well known that it is a custom with shepherds, when a lamb dies,
if the mother have a sufficiency of milk, to bring her from the hill,
and put another lamb to her. This is done by putting the skin of the
dead lamb upon the living one; the ewe immediately acknowledges the
relationship, and after the skin has warmed on it, so as to give it
something of the smell of her own lamb, and when it has suckled her two
or three times, she accepts it, and nourishes it as her own ever after.
Whether it is from joy at this apparent reanimation of her young one, or
because a little doubt remains in her mind, which she would fain dispel,
I can not decide; but, for a number of days, she shows far more
fondness, by bleating and caressing, over this one, than she formerly
did over the one that was really her own.

"'While at Willenslee, I never needed to drive home a sheep by force,
with dogs, or in any other way than the following: I found every ewe, of
course, hanging her head over her dead lamb; and having a piece of twine
with me for the purpose, I tied that to the lamb's neck or foot, and,
trailing it along, the ewe followed me into any house, or fold, or
wherever I chose to lead her. Any of them would have followed me in
that way for miles, with her nose close on the lamb, which she never
quitted for a moment, except to chase my dog, which she would not suffer
to walk near me.

"'Out of curiosity, I often led them in to the side of the kitchen fire,
by this means into the midst of servants and dogs; but the more that
dangers multiplied around the ewe, the closer she clung to her dead
offspring, and thought of nothing whatever but protecti