214 Transactions. — Zoology. 



with now. I was making inquiries through a southern paper^ 

 asking for information ahout hybrids between sheep and goats, 

 wdien a gentleman wrote me of these sheep, saying that thej^ 

 were a cross between the okl Dutch goat and the sheep. He 

 sent me a sample cut from a rug made from their skins by 

 the blacks at a mission-station. This piece of skin was 

 covered with short, shining, white hairs, with a few very 

 slight fibres slightly curled, requiring close inspection to de- 

 tect. This resembled greatly the skin of the Angora when in 

 summer coat. The gentleman had never seen the sheep them- 

 selves, as they were mostly superseded by the merino ; but his 

 description of the tail, and flavour of the same when cooked, 

 though gained by hearsay, was quite correct. 



I will now make a few remarks on peculiarities I have 

 noticed among domestic sheep : — 



In black and coloured crossbred and long-wool sheep a 

 small white spot below the eye is rarely absent ; but I believe 

 that black merinos never show these two spots. Can these 

 spots be inherited from a wild ancestor? If wanting in 

 merinos it would point to two different wild forms or species 

 from which these two bi-eeds are separately descended. 



It is a singular thing that we have no l^reed of domestic 

 sheep with rudimentary tails, considering that man has for 

 many generations been in the habit of excising that member, 

 and that their near allies the goat and deer rejoice in short 

 upturned tails like a rabbit. We have both cats and dogs 

 naturally with short tails. 



Here are two instances of inheritance which have been 

 observed by myself. When assisting at the annual ear-mark- 

 ing of lambs at my neighbour's (Mr. Low, of Yon Eiver, Lake 

 Wakatipu) I found a lamb with both ears so small that it was 

 impossible to place the proper ear-mark thereon. On looking, 

 carefully through the sheep in the same pen I saw^ the mother, 

 having the same extremely small ears as in the case of the 

 lamb. At another ear-marking years aftervv^ards, on the Glen- 

 game Station, Hawke's Bay, we were unable to ear-mark a 

 lamb, for the one ear was wanting entirely, nor vras there any 

 orifice leading to the organ of sound within the head. Ee- 

 raembering my former experience, I soon found the mother,, 

 possessing a like defect. 



From the Eyre Mountains, Otago, I once mustered in a 

 mob of merinos and their produce which had been lost for 

 some years. Among them was a young fom--tooth ram, un- 

 ear-marked, having small horns, little larger than those of a 

 ewe, and without convolutions or roughness. The wool was 

 very w^hite, having no yolk, fiiie, also straight, having no ourl 

 or spiral in the fibre. Unfortunately, this sheep was lost soon 

 afterwards. From such a sheep the celebrated Mauchamp 



