nd carried off a number. Often have I seen these poor
victims, when fallen down 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 progeny, and it has sucked her two or
three times, she accepts 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 on her mind which she would fain dispel, I cannot
decide; but, for a number of days, she shows far more fondness, by
bleating and caressing over this one, than she did formerly over the one
that was really her own. But this is not what I wanted to explain; it
was, that such sheep as thus lose their lambs must be driven to a house
with dogs, so that the lamb may be put to them; for they will only take
it in a dark confined place. But 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, standing 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 that I choose 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. I often, out of
curiosity, 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, she clung the closer to her dead offspring,
and thought of nothing whatever but protecting it. One of the two years,
while I remained on this farm, a severe blast of snow came on by night,
about the latter end of April, which destroyed several scores of our
lambs; and as we had not enow of twins and odd lambs for the mothers
that had lost theirs, of course we selected the best e