a's
jest.]

[Footnote 118: This requirement of short legs is the more remarkable
because of the long journeys which Varro says the Roman sheep were
required to make between their summer and winter pastures. A similar
necessity and bad roads created in England, before the eighteenth
century, a demand for long legged sheep. Prothero (_English Farming
Past and Present_) quotes a description of the "true old Warwickshire
ram" in 1789: "His frame large and remarkably loose. His bone
throughout heavy. His legs long and thick, terminating in large splaw
feet."

One of the things which Bakewell accomplished was to shorten the legs
as well as to increase the mutton on his New Leicesters. Of Bakewell,
Mr. Prothero justly says, "By providing meat for the million he
contributed as much to the wealth of the country as Arkwright or
Watt."]

[Footnote 119: Shepherds still look for the black or spotted tongue in
the mouth of the ram, for the reason given by Varro, but the warning
is no longer put in the shepherds' manual.]

[Footnote 120: Varro would still feel at home in Apulia, for there the
sheep industry is carried on much as it was in his time, and thence
the _calles publicae_, to which he refers, still lead to the summer
pastures in the Apennines. Cf. Beauclerk _Rural Italy_, chap. V. "The
extensive pasturages of the 'Tavoliere di Puglia' (Apulia) are of
great importance and have a history of their own. This vast domain
covers 750,000 acres: its origin belongs to the time of the Roman
Conquests and the protracted wars of the Republic, which were fought
out in the plains, whence they became deserted and uncultivated, fit
only for public pastures in winter time ... the periodical emigrations
of the flocks continue as in the past times: they descend from the
mountains into the plains by a network of wide grassy roads which
traverse the region in every direction and are called _tratturi_.
These lanes are over 100 yards in width and cover a total length
of 940 miles.... Not less than 50,000 animals are pastured on the
Tavoliere, requiring over 1,500 square miles of land for their
subsistence.... Five thousand persons are employed as shepherds."]

[Footnote 121: Varro quite uniformly uses words which indicate that he
was accustomed to see sheep driven (_abigere, propellere, adpellere_)
but we can see the flocks _led_ in Italy today, as they were in
Palestine soon after Varro's death, according to the testimony of that
beautiful