Liberia ^ 



a black belly and black markings on the limbs and face. But 

 for the black belly, this little Cameroons sheep is rather like 

 a feniale mouflon in appearance and coloration. As regards the 

 colour, the resemblance would be striking but for the black 

 under-parts. These may have changed abruptly from white to 

 black in the way that markings of this description can do in 

 closely allied varieties and sub-species, as for example the stripe 

 along the back in the Tragelaphs, which in females may be 

 black and in the males on maturity may become white ; or 

 in certain foxes, where the belly becomes black instead of 

 white. 



Other forms of the maned sheep (which is limited in its 

 range to the forest regions of West and West Central Africa) 

 are occasionally found of this brown colour with darker and 

 lighter markings ; but they are genenilly black and white like 

 the f^U-tailed sheep of Somaliland and Abyssinia. The ac- 

 companying drawing, which was done from a photograph I took 

 of one of these sheep at Monrovia, gives a good general 

 idea of the coloration, the average size of the horns and length 

 of throat mane. The mane in this breed of sheep seems to 

 take the place of the dewlap, which frequently appears in the 

 fat-tailed variety. The throat mane, however, is almost a 

 characteristic of the European mouflon and of several Asiatic 

 breeds of sheep.^ But I have seen not a few examples of the 



• It is of course met with to an exaggerated degree in the wild sheep of North 

 and North-east Africa, the audad {Ovis Icrvia), which hke the original ancestor of 

 the domestic breeds of sheep has a long tail. But beyond all question, though the 

 audad was domesticated by the Ancient Egyptians before they received from Asia 

 their first breeds of true domestic sheep, it is in no way whatever an ancestor of 

 the domestic sheep now in existence. It is so far divergent from the true sheep 

 as to be almost worthy of generic distinction. In some respects it is as much 

 related to the tahrs {Hemitragus) as it is to the genus Ovis. The sheep were not 

 derived from the goats, or vice versa ; but both sprang independently from the 

 more primitive Capricorn stock, represented by the tahr-goats, the gorals, chamois, 

 serows, etc. 



916 



