ORIGIN OF SOME DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 51 



we do not regard the arui as the parent stock. To which 

 it may be replied that the latter species has smoother horns, 

 with a curvature quite unlike those of any of the domesti- 

 cated races, which approximate to the horns of the Corsican 

 muflon. It seems somewhat difficult to believe that a 

 long tail can have been developed from a short tail — as 

 precisely the opposite development is the only one with 

 which we are acquainted ; but, nevertheless, it has been 

 suggested that the long tails of the domesticated breeds 

 are a kind of degenerate development. If this be sub- 

 stantiated, there is no reason why the muflon — a European 

 wild sheep, which in former times probably had a wider 

 distribution — or some allied Asiatic species, should not have 

 been the original progenitor of the domesticated breeds. A 

 small breed of long-legged sheep, with somewhat goatlike 

 horns, was in existence at the long-distant epoch when the 

 inhabitants of the Swiss pile-villages flourished, and its 

 descendants still survive in some of the more remote 

 districts of the Swiss Alps, where the breed is known as 

 the bilndnerschafe. So far as it goes, this form suggests 

 that the domesticated breeds are derived from an extinct 

 species. Although domestic breeds were possessed by the 

 ancient Egyptians, the sheep represented in the frescoes 

 seems to be the wild arui. 



With domesticated goats the case is very different ; it 

 being practically certain that most, if not all, of the breeds 

 of Europe and Western Asia are derived from the Persian 

 wild goat, or pasang, which ranges from Asia Minor through 

 Persia to Afghanistan and Sind. This handsome species 

 has long scimitar-like horns, with the front surface forming 

 a sharp ridge, instead of being flattened and knobbed, as 

 in the ibex. Many domesticated breeds have very similar 

 horns ; but in others, especially from Central Asia, the 



