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, and 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