MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS. 



THE KARAKUL SHEEP, THE PRODUCER OF " PERSIAN 

 LAMB " AND OTHER FURS OF OVINE ORIGIN. 



By ROBERT WALLACE, F.R.S.E. 



Professor of Agriculture and Rural Economy, 

 University of Edinburgh. 



THE Karakul sheep are the best fur-producing breeds 

 of the lofty plateaux of Central Asia. Their home is in 

 the arid region in Western Russian Turkestan, comprising 

 the Kizil-Kum and Kara-Kum deserts and the Khanates 

 of Bokhara and Khiva. This district is situated east of 

 the Caspian Sea and north of Afghanistan. 



When the European Russian, who goes to Kara-Kul to 

 buy fur-bearing sheep to produce so-called " Persian " 

 and "' Astrakhan " fur, speaks of Karakul sheep, he refers 

 to all good fur-producing sheep in Bokhara, but the 

 term is not used locally in Central Asia. The universal 

 names are Arabi, Duzbai, and Shiraz. The first seems 

 to indicate that this breed was first introduced from 

 Arabia, although neither history nor the Arabian sheep 

 of to-day support the assumption. The name Karakul 

 (meaning in Sart '* black lake ") refers to the lake in 

 the town of the same name on the lower Zarafshan, in 

 Bokhara, which is an important centre of the lamb-fur 

 and sheep-skin industry. The Kara-Kum desert is 

 extremely barren, consisting of sand dunes and saline 

 steppes covered with " Saxaul " (Haloxylon ammoden- 

 dron, Bunge), a thorny chenopodiaceous scrub, and 

 where there is no drifting sand and the soil is clayey in 

 nature, a little grass in spring. During the summer it 

 is very hot and there is little rain, while in winter the 

 temperature falls below zero. Under such trying climatic 

 extremes it is little wonder that the Karakul sheep have 

 earned the reputation of being perhaps the hardiest of 

 all domesticated animals. 



