24 Domesticated Animals. 



addition to these, the collection includes the horns of a male and a 

 female from Walhichia, purchased in 1902. 



The African Fat-tailed Sheep (fig. 12), of which a fine 

 ~ example is exhibited, is one of the most reniarkable 



P* breeds in the world, the tail being of great length and 

 also of excessive width at the base. In the specimen exhibited it is 

 considerably over a yard in length, and in life must have weighed 

 several pounds. Fat-tailed Sheep are met with in many parts of the 

 world, but in few of them is the fatness of the caudal appendage so 

 strongly marked as in the South African breed. This appears to 

 be due to that breed, according to the general belief, being the result 

 of a cross between the Persian Fat-tailed and the African Fat-rumped 

 Sheep. It is to the latter breed that the African Fat-tailed Sheep 

 apparently owes the excessive development of the basal portion of the 

 appendage from Avhich it takes its name. The specimen exhibited of 

 the Cape Fat-tailed breed is a ram from Cape Colony, presented by 

 the Director of Agriculture, Cape Colony, in 1906. 



_ H "'^^^ '^'^ countries to the east and south of the 



' ^ Caspian Sea, such as many parts of Central Asia, 

 6ep. Arabia, Persia, and North-ejistcrn Africa, occur 



certain breeds of Sheep characterised by the tail (which is of the 

 flattened type of that of tlie Fat-tailed breed) being short or rudi- 

 mentary, and by the accumulation of large masses of fat on the 

 buttocks (whence the name Ovis nieatojjyga, which has been ajiplied to 

 these Sheep). In the exhibited Arabian breed (fig. 13) the head is 

 black and the body and legs are white, while the coat of the adult is 

 hairy. The lambs have, however, a woolly coat, as have the adults of 

 the Abyssinian breed. In Central Asia both a black and a white strain 

 are kept ; the lambs of the former yielding the finely curled wool 

 known as Astrachan. These Sheep are represented in the collection by 

 a ram from Hedjaz, Arabia, presented by Capt. S. S. Flower in 1902. 



_ *• , ♦ H l^oDQCsticated Goats differ from Sheep by the 



absence of a gland on the face (the 'larmier,' or 

 tear-gland) below each eye, and the presence of a 

 beard on the chin of the male, or sotnetimes of both sexes. Rams 

 also lack the strong odour of he-Goats. Sheep have interdigital 

 glands between the hoofs of all the feet, but in Goats such glands 

 are wanting in the hind-feet, and may be also absent in the front 

 pair. The horns of Sheep (when present) generally form a close 

 horizontally directed spiral, with numerous fine transverse wrinkles, 



