SEA ISLAND SHEEP.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 547, 20 March 1876, Page 3

SEA ISLAND SHEEP.

A curious race of sheep exists on a small island in Englishman’s Bay, on the coast of Maine. The island is about two miles square, is open on the east to the full ocean, and about half of it is heavily wooded. The sheep are of a mixed breed, showing traces of the merino, Southdown, and long wooled breeds. They are nearly as wild as deer, and before the great storm of October, 1869, blew clown so many trees, they had paths where they always ran, so that it was not difficult to drive them into a corral when they were wanted for shearing, but now it is next to impossible to get them at all. Eew of the sheep, apparently, die from disease, and seem to live out their full allotted time. If not caught every year they usually wear their fleeces until sheared, so that three fleeces arc sometimes found, one ou top of another. In Winter they are divided into flocks of from fifteen to twenty-five, and live near a place where they can get to the shore for sea-weed and into the woods for shelter. Their principal living in winter in some of the varieties of seaweed, principally dnlsk. They also eat the branches of nearly all the trees that grow on the island. They like fir better than spruce, are very fond of mountain ash, eating branches as large as your finger, and also the bark elder and raspberry; also the moss from the old stumps and logs. In the spring, when the tide runs out very low, they go out on the rocks as far as they can get, and sometimes the tide will come up all round them. When this is the case they will not wade through water a few inches in depth, but will stick to the ledge till the tide takes them off. By that time their fleeces are so full of water and heavy that, although they can swim ashore, they cannot get out readily, but crawl a little way, and then wait for the water to drain off, and crawl a little farther. If there is any sea going it washes them back again, and they drown.