1^ Kssay on Sheep. 



its innocence, would soon be destroyed by tbat 

 numerous host to which this is the feeblest of 

 arms, if the utility of the race had not consti- 

 tuted man at once its tyrant and protector. 



Pliny says that in the island of Corsica there 

 is a species of Musmones not unlike sheep, 

 whose covering is more like the shag of goats 

 than the wool of sheep; and that the product 

 of this animal with the common sheep was an- 

 ciently called Umbri. From this circumstance 

 it may be inferred, not only that they were oc- 

 casionally mixed, but that the mixed race were 

 so common as to merit a distinct name. This 

 animal is not, however, coniined to the island 

 of Corsica; it is at this day to be found in all 

 the uncultivated parts of the islands in the Ar- 

 chipelago, in Greece, in Sardinia, and in the 

 north-eastern parts of Europe and Asia, even 

 in Kamschatka and Siberia.* The following 



* Pennant seems to think that it is also found in America, and, in proof 

 of it, he says he lias received from thence a fine fringe of twisted woolj 

 which had ornamented the dress of an inhabitant of Red Jack, presented 

 by Dr. Pallas, and that he had himself received another from the habit of 

 an American of latitude 50. The first was white, and of unparalleled 

 fineness; the other as fine, but a pale brown. The first he suj)i)osed the 

 wool which grows intermixed with hair on the Argali, and the other to 

 have been from the coat of the Musk Bull, which is a native of our coun- 

 try, and covered v/ith extremely fine long hair, and beneath that a coat 

 of very fine wool. The domestication of this animal would merit legisla- 

 tive attention. The missionaries to California in 1697, describe two dis- 

 tinct animals, with u head like a deer, and the horns of a ram, which 

 they say were furnished with very good wool, and which they called Wild 

 Sheep. Th.ese were doubtless the Musmones or Argali. 



