Hairy ) Sheep. 1 7 



In the eighty-third volume of the * Verhandhmgen ' 

 Bundner ^^ ^^^ ^^^-^^ Naturalists' Society will be found an 

 aneep. account of a peculiar breed of Domesticated Sheep with 

 Goat-like horns formerly kept by the natives of the Biinden 

 Oberland, Switzerland, and hence locally known as the 'Bund- 

 nerschaf.' The breed is known to be of great antiquity, but appears 

 to be now almost exterminated owing to crossing with other strains. 

 It appears to be nearly related to the so-called Peat-Sheep (Torfschaf ) 

 of tlie Prehistoric Swiss lake-dwellings, of which it is probably the 

 direct descendant. The Crossbred Valais and Bundner Sheep, of 

 which a ram from Graubiinden, Switzerland, is exhibited, represent 

 this ancient breed. 



, These small Sheep, which have long buff wool, with the 



under-side of the body and the legs black, are repre- 



2>neep. seated in the collection by two skulls of rams, one 



presented by H.H. Prince Roland Bonaparte in 1904, and the other 



by Dr. C. I. Forsyth Major in 1907. 



_, . Two types of Sheep with short tails, hair in place of wool, 



i* ^ and the horns small or wanting, occur in Africa. The 

 bneep. ^-^^^ characterised by the smooth coat and long limbs, 

 is the Long-limbed Sheep {Ovis loiujipes). The second, in which 

 the neck and throat are maned, the limbs shorter, and the size 

 smaller, is the Maned Sheep {O.juhata, fig. 7). Very generally these 

 sheep are piebald in colour, showing large patches of black or 

 brown on a white ground. In the Long-legged Sheep of Guinea 

 the males have small horns, but in the West Indian breed (imported 

 from Africa) horns are wanting in both sexes. The Camaroons 

 representative of the Maned Sheep appears to be the smallest breed 

 in existence. Limb-bones agreeing in size with those of this breed 

 have been discovered in Wiltshire. It has been assumed that the 

 Long-legged and the Maned Sheep are specifically distinct from 

 the European Ovis aries, but this is not certain. The presence of 

 face-glands shows that they are not derived from the Barbary Slieep 

 (0. lervia) of North Africa ; and as there is no other wild African 

 Sheep, it w'ould seem probable that they are related to the European 

 Mouflon {0. musimon). 



The West Indian breed is represented by a ram from Barbadoes, 

 presented to the Museum by the Minister of Agriculture for the 

 West Indies. Its most striking features are the uniformly foxy red 

 colour of the coat, and the short and hairy nature of the latter, 

 which displays no tendency to woolliness, and is almost exactly 



c 



