SHEEP AND GOAT KIND. 261 



The woolly sheep,* as it is seen among us, is 

 found only in Europe, and some of the temperate 

 provinces of Asia. When transported into warmer 

 countries, either into Florida or Guinea, it loses 

 its wool, and assumes a covering fitted to the 

 climate, becoming hairy and rough ; it there also 

 loses its fertility, and its flesh no longer has the 

 same flavour. In the same manner, in the very 

 cold countries it seems equally helpless and a 

 stranger ; it still requires the unceasing attention 

 of mankind for its preservation ; and although it 

 is found to subsist as well in Greenland as in 

 Guinea,! yet it seems a natural inhabitant of 

 neither. 



Of the domestic kinds to be found in the diffe- 

 rent parts of the world, besides our own, which is 

 common in Europe, the first variety is to be seen 

 in Iceland, Muscovy, and the coldest climates of 

 the north. This, which may be called the Ice- 

 land sheep, resembles our breed in the form of 

 the body and the tail, but differs in a very extra- 

 ordinary manner in the number of the horns, be- 

 ing generally found to have four, and sometimes 

 even eight, growing from different parts of the 

 forehead. These are large and formidable, and 

 the animal seems thus fitted by nature for a state 

 of war ; however, it is of the nature of the rest of 

 its kind, being mild, gentle, and timid. Its wool 

 is very different also from that of the common 

 sheep, being long, smooth, and hairy. Its colour 

 is of a dark brown, and under its outward coat of 



' Buffon, vol. xxiii. p. 168 V f Crantz. 



