CHAPTER XXVII 



SHEEP 



'/CONCERNING the cat's origin there are sur- 

 \*S mises, probabilities; concerning the sheep's 

 origin nothing is yet known. But if we are ignorant 

 from what wild species the sheep descends, we are 

 at least certain it came to us from Asia, where man 

 has raised flocks of these useful animals from the 

 earliest recorded times." 



"The East gave us the dog, cat, and sheep," Jules 

 here interposed, "and from what you said in some 

 of our former talks, I got the impression that the 

 other domestic animals also came from Asia." 



* ' The Asiatic origin of our oldest known and most 

 important domestic animals is a truth that all the 

 records of history affirm without a shadow of doubt. 

 We owe to the East the ox, horse, donkey, sheep, 

 goat, pig, dog, cat, hen. Civilization, in fact, had its 

 cradle in the lands of central Asia, where already 

 there were flourishing peoples versed in sheep-rais- 

 ing and agriculture when in our western countries 

 man, still plunged in wretched barbarism, lived only 

 by the chase and hunted the bear and urus with his 

 stone weapons." 



"Then those ancient peoples of the East came and 



255 



