Essay on Sheep. 29 



poses. Naturalists imagine that this excrescence 

 is owing to some circumstance in the food of 

 the sheep, which makes the fat fall down from 

 the loin into the tail, and thus occasions this 

 monstrosity. I do not, however, think this 

 probable, since the prodigious extent of coun- 

 try through which this race is propagated, must 

 render the food as various as the climates in 

 which they are bred. I rather think, that it 

 owes its origin to the art of man, grounded 

 upon some of those sports of nature, which, 

 in all domestic animals, afford a basis whereon 

 to ingraft his whims. The broad-tailed sheep 

 does not differ more from the Argali, than the 

 white fan-tailed pigeon does from the wild 

 blue European pigeon from which it origi- 

 nally descended ; or than the little hairless 

 smooth-skinned Turkish cur, from the rough 

 shepherd's dog, the common ancestor of his 

 race. It may be asked, to what end would 

 man cultivate this deformity, and that too 

 through so extensive a region as to forbid our 

 attributing it to whim or fashion? May not 

 the shepherd who first observed this lusus na- 

 turae in his flock have concluded, that he had 

 made a very valuable acquisition, since he not 

 only had a sheep that gave him as much wool, 

 milk or flesh as the rest of his flock, but a tail. 



