FOUR-HORNED SHEEP IN SCOTLAND 101 



Although in Scotland itself four-horned sheep are to 

 be found in a considerable number of areas, the native 

 regions in which they still survive, and from which the 

 park flocks have been recruited, are exceedingly limited. 

 They comprise only the Shetland Islands and the Outer 

 Hebrides, especially the islands of Harris and North Uist, 

 and St Kilda. But even in these scattered outposts it 

 cannot be said that a four-horned " breed " exists, for 

 polycerate sheep not only do not form the main constituents 

 of the flocks, but they occur sporadically, and probably most 

 often are the result of the crossing of native sheep with a 

 strong-horned breed, such as black-faces. Indeed, on account 

 of their sporadic occurrence at the present day, at least one 

 authority, Mr H. J. Elwes, 1 is inclined to doubt whether 

 a four-horned breed as such does or ever did exist. Certainly 

 no race of sheep living or extinct is known in which all 

 the individuals, male and female alike, possessed four or more 

 horns. Nevertheless, it seems legitimate to describe as a 

 race British four - horned sheep, since they exhibit clear 

 characters of build and of fleece, as well as the remarkably 

 frequent occurrence of four or more horns (the particular 

 item in their composite character to which their name is 

 due) ; and since, moreover, as the quotations given below 

 show, these characters have been associated and have 

 persisted together through at least three and a quarter 

 centuries. 



The significance of the old descriptions will be more 

 readily understood if we set against them recent accounts 

 of those remnants of the race of four-horned sheep which 

 still exist in Britain. In the words of Professor R. Wallace : 2 

 " It was small, hardy, and like (probably) all the aboriginal 

 sheep of the British Isles, covered with a small fleece of 

 very fine wool." Of a small flock in the Isle of Man, 3 belong- 



1 Elwes, in Nature, vol. 91, 1913, p. 86. 



2 Wallace, Farm Live Stock of Great Britain, ed. iv., 1907, p. 521, 

 Edinburgh. 



3 In his interesting account of the " Primitive Breeds of Sheep in 

 Scotland," which appeared in the Scottish Naturalist in 1912, Mr H. J. 

 Elwes states (p. 49) that the earliest reference to Manx sheep known to 



