SHEEP AND THEIR MANAGEMENT. 183 



NATIVE SHEEP. 



Although this name is popularly applied to the 

 common coarse-wooled sheep of the country, which 

 existed here previously to the importation of the 

 improved breeds, there is, properly speaking, no race 

 of sheep " native" to North America. Mr. Living- 

 ston, in speaking of a race as " indigenous," only 

 quoted the language of another,* and his informant 

 was either mistaken -as to the fact, or misapprehend- 

 ed the term. The only animal of the genus Ovis 

 originally inhabiting this country is the argali,f 

 known to our enterprising travellers and traders 

 who have penetrated to the Rocky Mountains, where 

 the animal is found, as the Big Horn. Though the 

 pelage of the argali approximates but little to the 

 wool of the domestic sheep, they are, as is well 

 known, considered by naturalists to have belonged 

 originally to the same species ; and the changes 

 which have taken place in the form, covering, and 

 habits of the latter, are attributed to their domesti- 

 cation, and the care and skill of man during a long 

 succession of years. 



The common sheep of the United States were of 

 foreign, and mostly of English origin. The writer 

 of the volume on sheep in the " Farmer's Series" 

 [Mr. Youatt] speaks of them as, " although some- 

 what differing in various districts, consisting chiefly 

 of a coarse kind of Leicester, originally of British 

 breed."{ Others have seen, or fancied they saw, in 

 some- of them, a strong resemblance to the South 

 Downs. Mr. Livingston was of this number. But 

 it is far more probable that they can claim a common 

 descent from no one stock. Our ancestors emigrated 

 from different sections of the British dominions, and 

 some portion of them from other parts of Europe. 



* Livingston's Essay on Sheep, p. 56, 60. 



t Godman's American Natural History. 



i Vol. on Sheep, p. 134. Essay on Sheep, p. 53. 



