4M RECORDS OF BIG GAME 



DOMESTICATED SHEEP (Ovis aries). 



The history and ancestry of the various breeds of domesticated 

 sheep are lost in the mists of antiquity, and naturalists are unable to 

 point with certainty to the wild stock from which any or all of them 

 are derived. This is the more to be regretted, seeing that the Swedish 

 breed is the type of the genus Ovis. Most domesticated breeds differ 

 from wild sheep by the woolly nature of their coat ; but since hairy 

 tame sheep are met with in Africa and elsewhere, this point of 

 difference is of comparatively little importance. More weight has 

 been attached to the length of the tail, which may be longer than in 

 the arui ; but in some of the more .primitive breeds like that of Soa, 

 and also in the Indian Hunia sheep, this appendage is comparatively 

 short, and its length in other breeds is probably due to a kind of 

 degeneration. If this be really the case, the ancestry may be looked 

 for among the muflons or urial or some allied extinct form, since the 

 horns of most breeds approximate to the muflon type. In many 

 breeds, Dorsetshire, for example, the females are horned ; and four, or 

 even five, horns occur in the males of certain breeds. Some eastern 

 sheep, like the Wallachian, have departed from the muflon type by the 

 development of upright corkscrew-horns comparable with those of the 

 markhor, but intermediate forms occur in Hungary. 



Lengthen Circum- Tip to Tip . Locality. Owner, 



outside curve, ference. 



45 A 9 15 Scotland . . . J. A. II. Drought. 



39i 8J 21 H. E. Surtees. 



37 8| 20 Loch Awe, N.B. . II. Murray. 



35^ 8 i6l ? Sir Victor Brooke's Collection. 



35.J, 8\ 24 Dorset . . . Hon. Walter Rothschild. 



33 ii 22^ Yarkand . . . British Museum (Hume Collec- 



tion). 

 28J 8 21 A Scotland . . . Rowland Ward. 



22g 9^ 2o| Yarkand . . . British Museum (Hume Collec- 



tion). 

 22g ' 9^ 22j Do. . . . Do. 



18 NY 16] Fezzan . . . British Museum. 



Faroe Islands . R. J. Cuninghame. 



