ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



227 



These cattle are ordinarily solid red in color, but in rare instances 

 a calf is dropped that is solid white except its ears and muzzle, 

 which are invariably red or brown, closely resembling the modern 

 wild white cattle of the parks. 1 



The sheep (Oris aries). Here again domestication took 

 place so long ago that its history is lost, and no man can say 

 what were the precise species that furnished the foundation 

 for our domesticated forms. 

 Certain it is that wild ani- 

 mals of the sheep kind are 

 and have been common on 

 the earth in nearly all moun- 

 tain regions of proper 

 latitude. 



There is no grander 

 specimen of the wild sheep 

 in all the earth than the big- 

 horn of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, Ovis canadejisis . 

 Standing three and a half 

 feet high at the withers (full-grown males), with strong, well-knit 

 legs supporting a muscular body covered with a dense coat of 

 light brown hair fading to a dirty white beneath, carrying through- 

 out a dense coat of "shining white underwool," this animal as a 

 whole is a striking specimen, even without reference to the head, 

 which is, after all, the distinguishing feature of the bighorn. 



This head is composed of a massive skull supporting a pair 

 of truly immense horns, sweeping upward and backward, then 



1 This is " reversion," or resemblance to a remote ancestor rather than to 

 the true parent, about which more was said in earlier chapters. The same 

 thing happens in nearly all breeds, and it is so common that a visit to large 

 stockyards like those of Chicago rarely fails to find at least one specimen of 

 this kind. Riding past a freight train standing on a siding, not long since, I 

 saw in bold relief among the cattle on one of the cars the characteristic dirty 

 white face, upturned slanting horns, and red ears of the Chillingham cattle. It 

 was an accidental product of an Illinois herd on his way to market, — mute wit- 

 ness of a history that is passing fast and must soon be read only in the books. 



Fig. 44. The Dorset, an English horned 



breed, nearer the bighorn than any other 



domesticated breed 



