20S Tnmsactioiis. — Zoology. 



which are not hkely to produce commercial products?"' Thi^> 

 shows a want of knowledge of such things as are beyond their 

 immediate range of %-ision ; for in the Bradford wool-market 

 considerable quantities of coloured wools are sold — black, 

 brov^Ti, grey, and yellow — imported from the south of Eussia 

 and other places. We here only see the wool-circulars referring 

 to our own products or those competing with them. 



Suppose we can find a distinct breed of sheep, having such 

 characteristics as lead to the conclusion that they are du-ect 

 descendants of the original sheej) first-^domesticated. This at 

 once brings us a link in evidence nearer to the sheep's four- 

 toed fossil ancestor, from which all our domestic animals 

 having double hoofs are considered to have descended. The 

 two immature hoofs at the back of the shank-bone of the 

 sheep, cow, and goat are taken to be rudiments of other two 

 claws or hoofs, which have shrunk to their present diminutive 

 size by generations of disuse, proving of no material service ta 

 the animal under changed conditions of life : for instance, 

 when the surface of the earth, or their place of habitation, 

 became more solid to travel over, and so required less spread 

 of foot. 



Fossil remains of animal hfe give evidence that reptiles, 

 and after them animals, all had five toes — at least, on their 

 front feet : one toe after another being gradually lost, in the 

 course of ages, from disuse ; the blood, or nourishing agent, 

 flowing naturally by preference to those toes in greater itse, 

 thereby the useless members became smaller and gradually 

 lost. In the horse only one toe remains; signs of two others 

 are in the sphnt-bones at either side of the cannon-bone, 

 hidden beneath the skin. This gives a emious instance of 

 variation working by two different plans to effect the same 

 result : in the horse the atrophy commencing at the hoof, or 

 free end of the claw, and leaving the splints, which are the 

 remnants of the second and fourth supplementary- cannon- 

 bones; but in the cow, &c., the atrophy commencing from the 

 reverse end, there remain no sphnt-bones, but two diminutive 

 hoofs, which are of no practical use to the animal. You will 

 the more readily understand this by remembering these bones 

 correspond witli those in the human hand between the wrist 

 and knuckle-joints — the two middle fingers agreeing with the 

 lx)ne3 contained in the two hoofs. 



There axe six or more animals in a natural state which are 

 classed as sheep, but writers have been unable as yet to trace 

 the descent of the domestic sheep from any one of these wild 

 species : the argali and mufflcn in Europe, thar and bm-rell 

 in the Himalayas, ammon and poll in Asiatic Tartary; — this 

 latter named after its discoverer, Marco Polo, one of the 

 earliest travellers who have left fairly reliable records of their 



