es of Belgie know it, and daily experience
(notwithstanding the sharpness of our laws to the contrary) doth yet
confirm it, that, although our rams and wethers do go thither from us
never so well headed according to their kind, yet after they have remained
there a while they cast there their heads, and from thenceforth they
remain polled without any horns at all. Certes this kind of cattle is more
cherished in England than standeth well with the commodity of the commons
or prosperity of divers towns, whereof some are wholly converted to their
feeding; yet such a profitable sweetness is their fleece, such necessity
in their flesh, and so great a benefit in the manuring of barren soil with
their dung and piss, that their superfluous members are the better born
withal. And there is never a husbandman (for now I speak not of our great
sheepmasters, of whom some one man hath 20,000) but hath more or less of
this cattle feeding on his fallows and short grounds, which yield the
finer fleece.

Nevertheless the sheep of our country are often troubled with the rot (as
are our swine with the measles, though never so generally), and many men
are now and then great losers by the same; but, after the calamity is
over, if they can recover and keep their new stocks sound for seven years
together, the former loss will easily be recompensed with double
commodity. Cardan writeth that our waters are hurtful to our sheep;
howbeit this is but his conjecture, for we know that our sheep are
infected by going to the water, and take the same as a sure and certain
token that a rot hath gotten hold of them, their livers and lights being
already distempered through excessive heat, which enforceth them the
rather to seek unto the water. Certes there is no parcel of the main
wherein a man shall generally find more fine and wholesome water than in
England; and therefore it is impossible that our sheep should decay by
tasting of the same. Wherefore the hindrance by rot is rather to be
ascribed to the unseasonableness and moisture of the weather in summer,
also their licking in of mildews, gossamire, rowtie fogs, and rank grass,
full of superfluous juice, but especially (I say) to over moist weather,
whereby the continual rain piercing into their hollow fells soaketh
forthwith into their flesh, which bringeth them to their baines. Being
also infected, their first shew of sickness is their desire to drink, so
that our waters are not unto them _causa aegri