HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION. 05 



living, the fields were separated by fences, and the 

 sheep, which were very active and robust, would roam 

 abroad, and without much difficulty jump over these 

 fences into other people's farms. As a matter of course, 

 this exuberant activity on the part of the sheep con- 

 stantly gave rise to all sorts of quarrels, bickerings and 

 contentions among the farmers of the neighbourhood ; 

 so it occurred to Seth Wright, who was, like his suc- 

 cessors, more or less 'cute, that if he could get a stock 

 of sheep like those with the bandy legs, they would not 

 be able to jump over the fences so readily, and he acted 

 upon that idea. He killed his old ram, and as soon as 

 the young one arrived at maturity, he bred altogether 

 from it. The result was even more striking than in the 

 human experiment which I mentioned just now. Col- 

 onel Humphreys testifies that it always happened that 

 the offspring were either pure Ancons or pure ordinary 

 sheep ; that in no case was there any mixing of the 

 Ancons with the others. In consequence of this, in 

 the course of a very few years, the farmer was able to 

 get a very considerable flock of this variety, and a large 

 number of them were spread throughout Massachusetts. 

 Most unfortunately, however — I suppose it was because 

 they were so common — nobody took enough notice of 

 them to preserve their skeletons ; and although Colonel 

 Humphreys states that he sent a skeleton to the presi- 

 dent of the Royal Society at the same time that he 

 forwarded his paper, and I am afraid that the variety 

 lias entirely disappeared ; for a short time after these 

 sheep had become prevalent in that district, the Merino 

 sheep were introduced ; and as their wool was much 

 more valuable, and as they were a quiet race of sheep, 

 and showed no tendency to trespass or jump over fences, 



