Note 4 — Chapter I · SPINNING, DYEING, AND WEAVING.

There is not the least shadow of truth in support of such a deduction; and particularly so since the general tenor of the Scriptures leads to a very different conclusion. We are, therefore, not authorized to give our support to any such hypothesis. The history of the Sheep and Goat is so interwoven with the history of man, that those naturalists have not reasoned correctly, who have thought it necessary to refer the first origin of either of them to any wild stock at all. Such view is, we imagine, more in keeping with the inferences to be drawn from Scripture History with regard to the early domestication of the sheep. Abel, we are told, was a keeper of sheep, and it was one of the firstlings of his flock that he offered to the Lord, and which, proving a more acceptable sacrifice, excited the implacable and fatal jealousy of his brother Cain. (See Part ii. pp. 217 and 293.)