requires the sacrifice, that he may provide light for our homesteads, and oil for our engines, both stationary and locomotive; and the wool-merchant and the currier insist on stripping the victim of his fleece, and even flaying his skin, before they can assure us of fit clothing and covering against cold and rain for our bodies and our belongings.  And what a wretched plight we should be in, if the sheep, or their like, did not come to the rescue, or the help they are fitted to render were not laid under contribution!  For not only might we be fated to go often dinnerless to bed, and to live all our days in a body imperfectly nourished, but our evenings would in many cases be spent without light, and our journeys undertaken without comfort, and our outer man left to battle at odds, unshod and unprotected, with the discomforts of the highway and the inclemency of the seasons.  Of all the services rendered by the sheep to the race of man, perhaps the most invaluable is that which is accorded in the gift of wool; and it is for the sake of this alone that, in many quarters, whole flocks, and even breeds, are reared and tended,—­so great is the demand for it, and such the esteem in which it is held for the purpose of clothing the body and keeping it in warmth.

3.  But, again, to advance a step further, there are, as the landlady of the inn remarked, “neeps intilt.”  On this part of the subject, that I may pass to the next topic on which I mean to speak, and which is of wider range, I intend to say little.  I have already referred to the important place assigned to this vegetable by a living economist as affording a basis for grouping society into two great classes.  To the farmer it is of equal, and far more practical, importance; for it is, by the manner of its cultivation, a great means of clearing the land of weeds; it is the chief support of sheep and cattle through the months of winter; and it is one of the most valuable crops raised on British soil, and of equal account in the agriculture of both England and Scotland.  The culture of turnips on farms involves considerable expense indeed, and is sometimes attended with loss, and even failure; but they are of inestimable value in cattle husbandry, as without them our sheepfarms would soon be depopulated, and the animals hardly outlive a winter.  One function they, and the like, fulfil in nature, is turning inorganic matter into vegetable, that the component elements may in this form be more readily assimilated into animal flesh and blood; while their introduction as an article of farming is of great importance as rendering possible and feasible a regular rotation of crops.