A Treatise on Sheep:: The Best Means for their Improvement, General Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases. — John Shaqi
A Treatise on Sheep:: The Best Means for their Improvement, General Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases.Blacklock, Ambrose
Science
A Treatise on Sheep:: The Best Means for their Improvement, General Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases.
Blacklock, Ambrose
Sheep
The relative positions of the layers of the skin, the mode in which
the hairs rise from them, and the form and situation of the sebaceous
follicles, will be better understood by referring to the following
cross section Fig 5. Pl. V., in which the line marked
_a_ Represents the cuticle,
_b_ The mucous layer,
_c_ The true skin,
_d_ Sebaceous follicles,
_e_ Hairs rising from the true skin and inflections of the
upper layers and piercing,
_f_ The thin film of the yolk.
(28.) _Periodical decidence of Wool._--It is affirmed that the only
real difference between hair and wool is in the latter falling off
periodically; but the same change takes place in animals totally
covered with hair; in fact, almost every animal is subject to
moulting, or a periodical decidence of its protecting covering. The
fleece of the sheep has been proved in many instances not to be liable
to _annual_ changes of this description;--Lord Western having, among
others, shown that the wool of the merino may be retained at least
three years without the slightest disposition to separate.
The annual employment of shearing, to anticipate this falling off of
the wool, is now common in most parts of the world; yet some, as the
Icelanders and Kamtschadales, still retain the primeval custom of
_rowing_, or pulling off the fleece in a mass, about the end of May,
at which time it is nearly loosened. This loosening of the attachments
of the fibre is supposed to be owing to a diminution, during winter,
of the nutritive process at the root of the hair, so that the fibre is
liable to give way at the tender part when the fleece becomes heavy
during Spring. This attempt at an explanation meets, however, with the
insurmountable objection, that long-woolled are less liable than
short-woolled sheep to this occurrence, a circumstance which ought to
be the reverse, if weight had any thing to do in the case.
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