TEMPKUATURE PREFEaRED BT SHEEP. 



75 



ter regions, it being difficult to rear lambs in the plains 

 of Meta, and no sheep are to be met with from the 

 river to the foot of the Cordilleras, though their skins, 

 from being in demand for making parchment, sell as 

 high as those of the ox. Sheep were at one time, ac- 

 cording to Thunberg, the scarcest articles in Batavia, 

 as their woolly coat rendered the heat of the climate quite 

 insupportable ; but this inconvenience was at last reme- 

 died by sending them, on their arrival from the Cape, 

 further up the country, to the Blue Mountains, where 

 the air is several degrees colder. The question then na- 

 turally occurs, if an elevation of temperature is, as in 

 this instance, fatal to these animals, how do they happen 

 to have spread over a vast tract of country in spite of 

 such extremes ? Simply for the reason, that when an 

 animal is left to the exercise of its own free will, and the 

 dominion of its instincts, it will not subject itself to the 

 danger of an extreme in any thing. It will not traverse 

 several hundred miles in a single season, and thus ex- 

 pose itself to sudden changes. The natural dispersion 

 of all animals is gradual, so that their constitutions are 

 enabled, from the slowness of the trans-ition, to accom- 

 modate themselves, by an alteration in covering and habit, 

 to surrounding circumstances, which would, were the 

 variations abrupt, speedily destroy it. The reason why 

 a race of animals occasionally thrives so well in a coun- 

 try to which it may be removed, appears to lie in its 

 being suited, I may say, accidentally, by peculiar con- 

 formation, to the temperature to which it is transplant- 

 ed. There are some happy cUmates where, introduce 

 what animals you will, no matter how stunted they pre, 

 or how different the degree of warmth may be, th f* 



