MOCFLOy.] 



AND TllElK VARIOUS BREEDS. 



[moufi.ox. 



the malea, they attack him with fury." There 

 is another pcculi:irity helonging to thia species. 

 Their flesh is woll-flavoured ; but they are 

 always in lean comliLion. Tlieir skins are so 

 thick as to be ahiiost im|)ervious. 



In this review of JNlr. Blyth's piijier, wo have 

 omitted the Ixiilas Probation, Oj,'ilby (of which 

 a unique spociinen exists in tho nuiaeum of 

 the Zoological Society, London, and the history 

 of which is obscure), and the Aoudad {Ovis 

 Tragelaplius, auct.), which we refer to the 

 goats. From none of the species here enu- 

 merated can we conlidontly select the type of 

 the domestic sheep {Ovis Aries, Linna)us) ; but, 

 " applying our knowledge as obtained inferen- 

 tially from the most ancient records," observes 

 the autlior of The Cow, " we iind incidental no- 

 tices tending to fix the character of the ear- 

 liest sheep, of which history informs us, with 

 the one or the other of the class of animals 

 above referred to, but especially the latter." 

 Abel had " firstlings of his ilock." Hence he 

 possessed domesticated animals. The lambs 

 of the Argali would be a ready means of pro- 

 creating a flock, as they are even now easily 

 domesticated, and which would hardly be the 

 case with the untameable Musmon. Abel also 

 offered fat, which is a secretion common to the 

 Argali, but of which the Musmon is said to be 

 destitute. The sheep of tlie Patriarchs, too, 

 had horns ; at any rate the rams had that dis- 

 tinction. Nor could they be simply upright ; 

 as a ram, it will be remembered, was " caught 

 in a thicket by his horns," when the staying 

 angel arrested the hand of Abraham. The 

 curvature of the horns being much more nearly 

 complete in the Argali than the Musmon (which 

 are merely bent back), renders it the most 

 likely of the two to be entangled in a thicket. 

 That sheep were, some of them, brown in Jacob's 

 day is quite certain, from their being set apart 

 for his wages; and this again agrees with the 

 colour of the Argali. That the covering of the 

 skin was something better than hair, even in 

 early days, is quite evident from Laban's shear- 

 ing his sheep ; for it always indicates, at least, 

 a woolly texture rather than a hairy one, which 

 requires the application of the shears. Job, 

 who lived, it is supposed, in early patriarchal 

 times, evidently made use of the wool of his 

 sheep. His flock consisted, at one period, of 

 7,000 sheep ; and, at another, of double that 



number; and he thus reminds his friends of 

 his benevolence : — "If I have seen any perish 

 for want of clothing, or any poor without cov- 

 ering; if his loins have not blessed me, niid if 

 ho were not waruunl with tho llccce of my 

 sheep." 



Tho Mouflons aTid Argalis — that is, the wild 

 species of tho genus Ovis — are covered witli a 

 harsh kind of hair; having beneath it, at its 

 roots, a short spiral wool, which, in winter, 

 becomes longer and fuller. Mr. Bell, indeed, 

 considers tho harsh hair as essentially wool in 

 its structure, presenting the imbrications which 

 tho microscope shows to be the cliaracteristic 

 of wool, and on which its felting property de- 

 pends ; and ho regards the short under-coat 

 as composed of hair, and not of wool. ]Mr. 

 Touatt makes the contrary statement ; and, 

 notwithstanding tho appearances noticed by 

 Mr. Bell, we incline to Mr. Touatt's opinion ; 

 for, be it observed, in the Cashmir and the 

 Angora goats, the long outer garment is hair; 

 the short under-coat, exquisitely fine v/ool. In 

 other wool-bearing animals, as the beaver and 

 otter, the same arrangement prevails ; and, in 

 some neglected breeds of common sheep, the 

 wool becomes mixed with long hairs (not 

 short and fine), which more or less obscure the 

 wool. 



Dr. John Davy, in the Pliilosophical Journal, 

 furnishes a striking instance of the eftect ot 

 climate in changing the character of covering 

 on the body of a sheep. He says — " The 

 sheep from Barbadoes, originally from an Eng- 

 lish stock, afi'ords a striking example ot tho 

 change that may be effected by climate, in a 

 few generations, in the character of the hair of 

 an animal. In that island, instances are fre- 

 quently to be seen of sheep in which hair has 

 so taken the place of wool (using the terms in 

 their usual acceptation), that, were it not for 

 the form of the animal — and that is not alto- 

 gether free from change — it would be impos- 

 sible to suppose that they belonged to the 

 same species as our English sheep." He care- 

 fully examined two specimens of hair — one 

 from a sheep of two years old, the other from 

 one a year old. Both were of the same colour — 

 a light reddish-brown — and the same length. 

 " The hair of the three-year-old," he proceeds 

 to say, " was coarser than that of the one-year- 

 old ; it consisted chieflv of harsh fibres, slightly 



G93 



