'793«' account of the Tscherkefsian Jheep. 129 



the back. The rams are seldom without horns, and 

 the ewes have them often bent in a lunar form. 



The wool though coarse is without admixture of 

 hair*, and promises to be much meliorated by crof- 

 sing the breed, and rearing the animal, with more 

 care and fkill. 



It is even known to become much finer without 

 the afsistance of art, merely from the influence of a 

 temperate climate, as on mount Caucasus. 



The tail of the ram is covered with fine long 

 ■wool, like the Indian flieep described by BufFon, which 

 trails on the ground, so as to efface the prints made 

 by the animal's feet on sand; and it contains often 

 twenty joints or vertebrae. 



This variety of iKeep seems to have quitted with 

 its coarse fleece and all its native ferocity, in pafsing 

 from the state of nature to that of servitude ; as it 

 is the mildest gentle animal pofsible, although lefs 

 degenerated inform from the argali or musimon, the 

 parent animal of the species, than the steatopyga or 

 fat tailed, which has at the same time preserved 

 much more of its wildnsfs than the gentle Tscherkef- 



* It appears to me, that the having no hair among the wool is 

 not a specific, but merely an accidental distinction. Wc know well 

 that among tim varieties of fhecp common in England, and everj' o- 

 ther European country, there are found many which have hairs a- 

 riiong their fleece, while it is only the selected breeds that have none. 

 This variation, which has probably been at first accidental, like many 

 other T!arieties among domestic animals, becomes in some measure 

 permanent, by caref.illy excluding other varieties from intermixing 

 with the selected breed, as will be moi-a fully proved in the seqael 

 of this cfsay. Edit. 



VOL. xvi. H, ^ 



