crowd
with her lamb, she halted on the north side of the town the whole day,
where she was seen by hundreds, lying close by the road-side. But next
morning, when all became quiet, a little after the break of day, she was
observed stealing quietly through the town, in apparent terror of the
dogs that were prowling about the street. The last time she was seen on
the road was at a toll-bar near St. Ninian's; the man stopped her,
thinking she was a strayed animal, and that some one would claim her.
She tried several times to break through by force when he opened the
gate, but he always prevented her, and at length she turned patiently
back. She had found some means of eluding him, however, for home she
came on a Sabbath morning, early in June; and she left the farm of
Lochs, in Glen-Lyon, either on the Thursday afternoon, or Friday
morning, a week and two days before. The farmer of Harehope paid the
Highland farmer the price of her, and she remained on her native farm
till she died of old age, in her seventeenth year.

"With regard to the natural affection of this animal, the instances that
might be mentioned are without number. When one loses its sight in a
flock of sheep, it is rarely abandoned to itself in that hapless and
helpless state. Some one always attaches itself to it, and by bleating
calls it back from the precipice, the lake, the pool, and all dangers
whatever. There is a disease among sheep, called by shepherds the
Breakshugh, a deadly sort of dysentery, which is as infectious as fire,
in a flock. Whenever a sheep feels itself seized by this, it instantly
withdraws from all the rest, shunning their society with the greatest
care; it even hides itself, and is often very hard to be found. Though
this propensity can hardly be attributed to natural instinct, it is, at
all events, a provision of nature of the greatest kindness and
beneficence.

"Another manifest provision of nature with regard to these animals is,
that the more inhospitable the land is on which they feed, the greater
their kindness and attention to their young. I once herded 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 the thwarter-ill (a sort of paralytic affection) came
among them, a