SHEEP. 



arch, the number of which are placed neatly and 

 compactly together, the two next the middle being 

 the largest, and the others becoming less and less as 

 they are nearer the sides ; the line of the forehead is 

 inched; the muzzle is without any naked part; the 

 nostrils elongated, oblique, and terminal ; and the chin 

 is without any beard ; the ears are of mean length and 

 pointed ; the body of middle stature, warmly covered 

 with hair ; the less are slender, and without any 

 brushes on the knees ; the females have two inguinal 

 teats, but there are no pores in the groin ; the tail is 

 generally short and pendent. 



Generic characters of the sheep can hardly, how- 

 ever, be so expressed as that they will be perfectly 

 applicable to any one of the great number of breeds 

 into which the genus has been broken ; and thus, 

 though every child knows a sheep from any other 

 animal at first sight, it is not quite so easy a matter 

 to say why it is a sheep, and not a coat or something 

 else. In order -to be quite clear upon such matters 

 as this we want information respecting the reversed 

 operation. We know that certain stocks may be 

 broken into sections, but we have very little knowledge 

 as to how these sections may be put together so as to 

 get us back the original stock of which they were 

 broken. It is true that, when plants or animals 

 that once have been changed, or as we say, according 

 to the notions which we have of them, improved by 

 artificial means, are neglected, they become very 

 inferior to what they were in the cultivated state ; but 

 we cannot assert with truth that they return to the 

 original. If they are very highly cultivated, that is, 

 brought very far out of their natural state, and then 

 abandoned to the contingencies of wild nature, 

 they are apt to perish entirely. This seems to 

 have all along been the case with the cereal grasses 

 which mankind have cultivated for their bread corn. 

 There is no reason to doubt that all of these have 

 been cultivated out of wild grasses ; and it is very 

 unlikely that all the wild grasses out of which they 

 have been cultivated should have perished. Of 

 several of the millets, and the raggy of India, as 

 well as various others of the inferior sorts, the originals 

 are still to be met with in wild nature, not very dif- 

 ferent from the cultivated ones ; but we look in vain 

 for any wild plant which we can with certainty say 

 once was, or hereafter is to be, wheat or barley ; and 

 the same may be said of many of the more valuable 

 luxuries. 



Animals being more removed from the state of 

 mere matter than plants less completely in the 

 power of man, as clay in the hand of the potter, than 

 plants cannot be so much changed by human art ; 

 l)nt still there are several of them of which we cannot 

 liiul iis wild nature any thing that we can absolutely 

 say is the original. This is the case with the dog, 

 the horse, and the ox ; for though there are wild ani- 

 mals still to be met with, with which some at least 

 of these can have fertile progeny, yet we cannot say 

 that they are the species out of which the domestic 

 one has been cultivated. 



It is probably the same with the sheep. The sheep, 

 notwithstanding the influence which cultivation has 

 had upon it, is not nearly so domesticated an animal 

 as the ox ; and, therefore, there are wild sheep which 

 resemble the cultivated sheep much more than any 

 of the wild oxen resemble the cultivated oxen. But 

 still this resemblance, or the fact of their having fer- 

 tile progeny with each other, must not be hastily 



taken in evidence that the ones which are now wild 

 are the stock out of which the cultivated ones have 

 been bred. Of late it has been ascertained that the wild 

 sheep of the mountainous parts of the Mediterranean 

 islands will breed with tame sheep ; but this fact 

 has not been ascertained long enough for enabling 

 us to decide whether they will remain as permanent 

 races or not. 



The wild sheep which are still to be met with are 

 found in the mountainous parts of the great lands in 

 the northern hemisphere ; but it does not appear that 

 there are any in the south in South America ; in 

 Africa, south of the Great Desert ; in Asia, south of 

 the Himalaya; in the Oriental Archipelago ; or in the 

 isles of the Pacific, except the very northerly ones. 

 Thus it should seem that they are originally and pro- 

 perly animals of the northern hemisphere ; and the 

 places in which they are found point out the phy- 

 sical circumstances of what may be considered as 

 their country. They are decidedly mountain 

 animals, but not scrambling among the rocks as the 

 goats are ; and although they are placed differently 

 in the systems, it appears that their proper locality 

 is between the goats and the antelopes, though in 

 the countries where antelopes are most numerous, 

 there are no wild sheep, w hich has led to the placing 

 of them between the goats and the oxen. The goat 

 on the pinnacles where the patches of herbage are 

 small and of difficult access, the sheep on the breadth 

 of the dry upland pasture, and the ox in the valley 

 or meadow by the large river, are the places of the 

 three in nature. In their food, and the manner of 

 taking it, they all very much resemble each other, for 

 they are all grazing animals ; but a goat can eat 

 vegetables which are poisons to the other two, and a 

 sheep can find its food where an ox would starve. 

 On the other hand, a goat would be very much out 

 of its element in the humid pasture which the ox 

 prefers ; and a sheep would soon become diseased in 

 the feet and unable to seek its food. The sheep too, 

 even in the cultivated races, must, in order to be pro- 

 fitable, have a much greater breadth of pasture than 

 any of the other two. 



There is another result of the comparison of these 

 three genera of the Ruminantia all things considered 

 the most valuable to man in the whole animal king- 

 dom, which should not be overlooked, because it 

 points out the situation in which each may be intro- 

 duced with the greatest advantage. The rocks of the 

 goats, and the plains and meadows of the oxen, are 

 both liable to sudden rains ; and the coverings and 

 also the constitutions of the animals are such, that 

 the rain does them comparatively little injury. The 

 hair of the goat throws off the rain as if there were 

 absolutely a repelling power in it ; and even when 

 the goat is, like the shawl goat of the northern slopes 

 of the Himalaya, provided with a close wool on the 

 skin, there is always along with it a sufficient quan- 

 tity of long hair of a smooth and shining surface to 

 throw off the rain and snow. Sheep, in the wild 

 state, are understood to have hair and not wool, 

 though the point is one which does not admit of 

 absolute demonstration ; but even then their hair is 

 very different from that of goats ; and when the hair 

 of which is laid into wool, unless it be in climates 

 which are positively cold and rainy, the whole hair 

 turns wool without any long and smooth hair to carry 

 off the water. There is also a tenderness in the 

 covering of the sheep, whether that covering be hair 



