WallacJiian Sheep. 23 



The ram exhibited wa« brought home from India by H.R.H. the 

 Prince of Wales in 190(5, and exliibited in the Zoological Society's 

 Menagerie, where it died in 1908, when the skin was presented to 

 the Museum by the Council of the Society. The two skulls exhibited 

 were presented to the Museum by Mr. Brian Hodgson in 1848. 



.„ ,, , . Among the numerous domesticated breeds of Sheep 



W51.ll3.Pni3.Tl 



departing more or less widely from the type of the 

 diieep. ^^.jj^i Mouflon and the Urial perhaps the most remark- 

 able is the one conunonly known in this country as the Wallachian 

 Sheep, and in Cxcrmany as the ' Zackt-lschaf ' (fig. 8). In the typical 

 breed, which appears to have its home in Wallachia and Rumtniia and 

 some of the adjacent countries of Eastern Europe, the horns, which are 

 of great length, are twisted into close straight spirals, rising from the 

 head with but little outward divergence. This type is shown in a 

 miniature model exhibited among the collection, and in the general 

 form of the horns presents a marked superficial resemblance to the 

 Suleiman race of the Markhor Wild Goat, so much so, indeed, as to 

 have led to the suggestion that the Wallachian Sheep originated 

 from a cross between the last-named species and an ordinary Sheep. 

 In a second breed, apparently a native of Hungary, the horns, although 

 of the same general type, are somewhat more divergent and have the 

 spiral rather more open. So diflferent are Wallachian Sheep from 

 the ordinary type that Linnaeus regarded them as specifically dis- 

 tinct from the latter {Ovis aries), and gave them a separate name, 

 Ovis strepsiceros. Certain liorns of the Indian Hunia Ram presented to 

 the Museum by Mr. A. 0. Hume indicate that there must be a 

 transitional form between the Wallachian and the ordinary Sheep in 

 the matter of horns ; for in these Hunia Rams, although the ordinary 

 ' ammon-spiral ' is preserved, the horns are extended much more 

 laterally outwards than usual, and at the same time display a more 

 corkscrew-like type of spiral. The intermediate link seems to be 

 formed by a Hungarian breed in which the horns diverge almost 

 directly outwards in a very open spiral, which is, however, merely an 

 exaggeration of the ordinary Sheep spiral. They are, in fact, almost 

 exactly intermediate between those of the Hunia ram and those of 

 the Hungarian variety of the ' Zackelschaf,' which should therefore 

 be relegated to the rank of a sub-species, or breed of Oiis aries, as 

 Ovis aries strepsiceros. 



The Wallachian Sheep is represented in the collection by a mounted 

 male from Wallachia, purchased in 1903 ; and also by a miniature 

 mpdel of a male of the Hungarian breed, purchased in 1902. In 



