DOMESTICATED SHEEP 395 



Length on Circum- ~,. ~,. 

 front curve. ference. Tip to Tip. Locality. Owner. 



3 2 i 9 9 Sardinia . . . C. Sloane Stanley. 



3 1 8 10 Do. ... C. G. R. Lee. 



3oi S 14 Uo. Rhys Williams. 



29! 8 124 Do. ... C. Sloane Stanley. 



29f 8 Do. ... J. D. Cobbold. 



29 8| ii Do. . Hon. R. A. Ward. 



8J 21 Do. ... E. N. Buxton. 



9 10 Do. ... F. G. Barclay. 



28^ 9f 9 Do. . . . Edinburgh Museum. 



27g 8| 5J Do. ... W. E. Pease. 



27! 8| 9 Do. ... Prince E. Demidoff. 



27 9i ioi Do. ... Sir Edmund G. Loder, Bart. 



27 8 10 Do. . . . British Museum. 



DOMESTICATED SHEEP (Ovis aries). 



The history and ancestry of the various breeds of domesticated 

 sheep are lost in the mists of antiquity, and naturalists are unable to 

 point to the wild stock from which any or all of them are derived. 

 This is the more to be regretted, seeing that the Swedish breed is the 

 type of the genus Ovis. Most domesticated breeds differ from wild 

 sheep by the woolly nature of their coat ; but since hairy tame sheep 

 are met with in several uncivilised countries, this point of difference is 

 of comparatively little importance. More weight has been attached to 

 the great length of the tail, which is much longer than even that of 

 the arui ; and, as mentioned above, that species is almost certainly not 

 the father of the domesticated sheep. There is, however, some degree 

 of probability that the long tails of the domesticated breeds are due to 

 a kind of degeneration. And if this be really the case, their ancestry 

 might be looked for among the muflons or urial or some allied extinct 

 form, since the horns of most breeds approximate to the muflon type. 

 In many breeds, Dorsetshire, for example, the females are horned ; 

 and four, or even five, horns occur in the males of certain breeds. 

 Some eastern sheep, like the Wallachian, have departed from the 

 muflon type by the development of upright corkscrew-horns comparable 

 with those of the markhor or kudu. 



