230 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



It cannot fail to occur to the reader that the wild and inacces- 

 sible mountain regions and high plateaus of central and southern 

 Asia have afforded a unique retreat for multitudes of the wild 

 relatives of the larger of our domestic animals, ^ and that to a 

 similar but less extent the mountain regions of Africa and of 

 western America, both to the north and the south, have served 

 the same significant purpose. 



The domestic sheep are, roughly speaking, of four distinct 

 classes : first, the horned varieties like the Merino and the Dor- 

 set, resembling most closely the nearest wild relatives ; second, 

 the common hornless and coarse-wooled breeds of England and 

 America, such as the Shropshire, Lincoln, Cotswold, Leicester, 

 and Southdown ; third, the so-called fat-tailed sheep of south- 

 western Asia and northeastern Africa, in some strains of which 

 the tail often reaches a weight of forty or fifty pounds and drags 

 upon the ground, while in others, with shorter tails, the enormous 

 amount of fat occurs in the rump ; ^ fourth, a minor strain be- 

 longing to Iceland and remarkable for the fact that, like the 

 Cyprian wild sheep, its horns are not limited to two, but, ac- 

 cording to Youatt, may be three or any other number, odd or 

 even, up to as many as eight. 



It must be clear to the student that there is no dearth of 

 evidence in nature for the domestication of sheep, and that, even 

 yet, should all our common breeds be lost, they could be sub- 

 stantially restored from new material out of the truly wild. The 

 greatest change made in domestication would seem to have 



1 It is difficult to realize that this " roof of the world " — this high and broken 

 interior with its forbidding mountainous southern wall, in most places almost 

 uninhabitable by man and hence practically given over to the wild — is not a 

 small area, but rather a region of vast extent, not less than two thousand miles 

 across. When this is fully realized it will not seem so strange that almost 

 everything traces to a wild counterpart in " central Asia." It is the great left- 

 over and uncivilized part of the world. 



2 This fat is exceedingly soft, more like marrow than tallow, and is often 

 spread directly on bread and eaten as butter. It is the skins of the young 

 lambs of these sheep that constitute the astrakhan of commerce, and it is their 

 intestines from which the Germans make the so-called catgut for the violin 

 and other small stringed instruments. 



