152 Sheep 



several of those of Africa, have more or less distinctly hairy coats ; and it 

 is stated that this type of pelage tends to reappear in the woolly breeds of 

 domesticated sheep which have run wild. 



" Sheep," writes Darwin in liis Animals and Plants under Domestication, 

 " have been domesticated from a very ancient period. Riitimeyer found in 

 the Swiss lake-dwellings the remains of a small breed, with tiiin, tall legs, 

 and horns like those of a goat, thus differing somewhat from any kind now 

 known. Almost every country has its own peculiar breed ; and many 

 countries have several breeds differing greatly from each other. One of 

 the most strongly marked races is an Eastern one with a long tail, includ- 

 ing, according to Pallas, twenty vertebra-, and so loaded with hit that it is 

 sometimes placed on a truck, which is dragged about by the living animal. 

 These sheep, though ranked by Fitzinger as a distinct aboriginal form, 

 bear in their drooping ears the stamp of long domestication. This is like- 

 wise the case witli those sheep which have two great masses of fat on the 

 rump, with the tail in a rudimentary condition. The Angola variety of 

 the lon<>--tailed race has curious masses ot fat on the back ot the head and 

 beneath the )aws. Mr. [Brian] Hodgson, in an admirable paper on the 

 sheep of the Himalaya, infers from the distribution ot the several races that 

 this caudal augmentation in most of its phases is an instance of degeneracy 

 in these pre-eminently Alpine animals. The horns present an endless 

 diversity in character, being not rarely absent, especially in the female 

 sex or, on the other hand, amounting to four or even eight in number. 

 The horns, when numerous, arise from a crest on the frontal bones, which 

 are elevated in a peculiar manner." 



The important feature in this passage is Hodgson's theory that the 

 len"-th of the tail in the domesticated breeds is due to degeneracy. And if 

 this be true, and bearing in mind that the horns of many ot such breeds are 

 of the same o-eneral character as those of several members of the Caprovine 

 group, it is quite possible that the latter is really identical with the typical. 



