282 MOSTLY MAMMALS 



pair, which generally retain their ordinary position and form, 

 although frequently showing a more or less pronounced lack 

 of symmetry. When the Zoological Society possessed a 

 farm at Kingston Hill, in the year 1829, several of these 

 four-horned sheep were kept there ; but, although llamas 

 and alpacas, which are just as much domesticated animals, 

 are exhibited at the present day in the Society's menagerie 

 in the Regent's Park, four-horned and other abnormal 

 breeds of sheep are not on show. Flocks of four-horned 

 sheep are, however, kept in several British parks. 



Bearing in mind the close affinity existing between 

 sheep and goats, it is not a little remarkable that the 

 additional horns developed in the four-horned breed of the 

 former should approximate to a considerable degree both 

 in direction and in curvature to those of the latter. This, 

 however, must not be taken as an indication that the 

 additional pair in the four-horned sheep represents the 

 normal pair of the goats. 



Four-horned sheep belong to at least two distinct breeds, 

 one of which is of great antiquity. According to report this 

 breed originally came from Iceland and the Faroe Islands, 

 where these sheep still exist, as they also do in the Orkneys, 

 Shetlands, Hebrides, and the Isle of Man. Occasionally, it 

 is said, the little brown sheep of the island of Soa, in the 

 Hebrides, develop four horns, although they are normally 

 two-horned. 



Like the Soa breed, European four-horned sheep are 

 of very small size, and dark in colour, the fleece being not 

 infrequently mottled with patches of brown and white. The 

 wool, too, as in nearly or quite all the inferior breeds of 

 sheep, is much mixed with hair, so that it is by no means 

 of a fine quality. 



From the islands of north-western Europe four-horned 



