144: HISTORY OF THE SHEEP. 



be considered rather as an injury than an improvement ; 

 and if we are to look for this animal in its noblest state, 

 we must seek for it in the African desert, or the extensive 

 plains of Siberia. Among the degenerate descendants of 

 the wild sheep, there have been so many changes wrought, 

 as entirely to disguise the kind, and often to mislead the 

 observer. The variety is so great, that scarcely any two 

 countries have their sheep of the same kind ; but there is 

 found a manifest difference in all, either in the size, the 

 covering, the shape, or the horns. 



The woolly sheep, as it is seen among us, is found only 

 in Europe, and some of the temperate provinces of Asia. 

 When transported into warmer countries, either into Flo- 

 rida or Guinea, it loses its wool, and assumes a covering 

 fitted to the climate, becoming hairy and rough ; it there 

 also loses its fertility, and its flesh no longer has the same 

 flavor. In the same manner, in the very cold countries, it 

 seems equally helpless and a stranger ; it still requires the 

 unceasing attention of mankind for its preservation ; and 

 although it is found to subsist, as well in Greenland as in 

 Guinea, yet it seems a natural inhabitant of neither. 



Of the domestic kinds to be found in the different parts 

 of the world, besides our own, which is common in Eu- 

 rope, the first variety is to be seen in Iceland, Muscovy, 

 and the coldest climates of the north. This, which may 

 be called the Iceland sheep, resembles our breed in the 

 form of the body and the tail ; but differs in a very extra- 

 ordinary manner in the number of the horns ; being gene- 

 rally found to have four, and sometimes even eight, grow- 

 ing from different parts of the forehead. These are large 

 and formidable ; and the animal seems thus fitted by 

 nature for a state of war ; however, it is of the nature 

 of the rest of its kind, being mild, gentle, and timid. Its 

 wool is very different also from that of the common sheep, 

 being long, smooth, and hairy. Its color is of a dark 



