104 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



four-horned sheep was published; but curiously enough it also 

 refers to the same lowland area, wherein for a hundred years 

 and more from our own day no four-horned sheep have 

 been known. In 1792 Rev. Alex. Brown, in his account 

 of the parish of Moffat in the lowland counties of Dumfries 

 and Lanark, published in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical 

 Account of Scotland, vol. ii., p. 292, says : " It is not long 

 since the sheep in this part of the country were of the 

 four-horned kind, a few of which, it is said, remain still 

 in some parts of Nithsdale. Their body is smaller, but 

 their wool finer than those of the present breed. Their 

 want of weight for the butcher, and greater difficulty and 

 danger in lambing have banished them from this place." 



Still the physical characters, so far as they are 

 detailed, agree with those of the primitive sheep which to- 

 day are confined to our remote islands. But another curious 

 resemblance appears when we compare the statement, made 

 in 1792, of the maternal inefficiency which led to the 

 banishment of the flocks from the Scottish lowlands, with 

 the statement already quoted from Prof. Wallace regarding 

 modern Manx four-horned sheep, which " proved to be such 

 indifferent nurses that they were eventually put away." 



Sixteen years later, a posthumous volume by Dr John 

 Walker, Professor of Natural History in Edinburgh University, 

 was published, entitled Essays on Natural History and Rural 

 Economy \ Edinburgh, 1808, one essay written between 1764 

 and 1774, consisting of a list of Scottish mammals " Mam- 

 malia Scotica." In this, amongst the varieties of sheep, he 

 describes (pp. 522 and 523), " Ovis polycerata, cornibus 

 pluribus. . . . Minima alpina, cauda brevissima, quatuor et 

 etiam sex cornibus interdum donata. Caput, pedes, nigro- 

 alba. Lana brevissima, pilosissima. 



" Habitat in insula Vista australi. Anno 1578 oves in 

 Tuedia, cornibus ternis, quaternis, et etiam senis, instructs; 

 fuerunt. . . . Res hodie in ilia regione penitus incognita." 



Here recurs the reference to the early Tweeddale flocks, 

 based upon Bishop Lesley's statement, though it is interesting 

 to find that even about 1770 the presence of four-horned 

 sheep can be described as " utterly unknown " in the lowland 



