12 HISTORY OF THE SHEEP. 



itself to prove, that the sheep and goat can never be 

 made to form the types of separate genera.* 



(19.) Horns of Sheep. — As the Chevrotains or Musks 

 are distinguished, with the CameU, from other animals 

 of this order by the absence of horns, so are sheep, oxen, 

 goats, and antelopes, distinguished from the rest of the 

 horned genera of the order, by the persistence of their 

 frontal prolongations. The horn is an elastic sheath 

 of agglutinated hairs, which appears within the first 

 twelve months, though sometimes present at birth, and 

 increases by layers, one being added every year, so that 

 the age of a ram may be known by the number of rings. 

 The ewes have commonly no horns, but only a protu- 

 berance in pjace of them. The horn is supported by, 

 and serves to cover, a highly vascular prolongation of 

 the frontal bone, and it is at its root, where large 

 vessels, and nervous filaments are entering, that blows 

 occasion so great agony to the animal, apart from the 

 damage which the other bones sust/^'n by the infliction 

 of violence on so powerful a levCi. 



(20.) Structure of the Stomach. — The term ruminat- 

 ing, indicates the power possessed by this animal, in 

 common with many others, of masticating its food a 

 second time, by returning it to the mouth after a short 

 maceration. This they are enabled to do, from the 

 structure of the stomachs, or, more correctly speaking, 

 stomach ; as anatomists have now concluded, from all 

 animals being constructed on one common principle, 

 that ruminating animals are not possessed of four 



* For further information on this subject, see that exccllcr.t pape: rnj 

 the Natural History of the Sheep and Goat, by James Wilson, Esq. ia 

 h'tv IX cf the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture. 



