HISTORY. 27 



yet worthy of trust as to what he says he heard or saw, 

 mentions the existence of a race of Wild Sheep in the deso- 

 late island of St Kilda. He describes them as being larger 

 than the largest goats, and as having tails hanging to the 

 ground, and horns more bulky than those of the ox ; and, ac- 

 cording to Mr Pennant, an animal corresponding with this 

 description is figured on a bas-relief taken from the wall of 

 Antoninus, near the modern city of Glasgow. 



Looking at the vast diversities in the Sheep of different 

 and distant countries, and the constancy with which certain 

 races preserve their distinctive characters under the same 

 conditions of temperature, food, and treatment, we are 

 conducted to the conclusion, that Wild Sheep proper to 

 different countries have been domesticated by the inhabi- 

 tants ; and, accordingly, that the domesticated races are 

 not of one, but of various species, having the property of 

 procreating with one another in the reclaimed state. The 

 same hypothesis, we have seen, has been applied to the Goat, 

 there being no other which satisfactorily explains the per- 

 manent differences which races of those animals exhibit 

 under the same conditions from age to age. A like suppo- 

 sition, we shall see in the sequel, must be made in the case 

 of the Dog, in order to enable us to account for those great 

 variations which the domesticated races present in almost 

 every country. The opinion, w r e shall see, that may most 

 reasonably be entertained regarding the origin of the Do- 

 mestic Dogs, is, that they are descended from the Wolf and 

 other Canidse yet found in the wild state ; and there is no 

 more difficulty in assuming the derivation of the Sheep than 

 of the Dog from species yet existing in the state of nature, 

 since the habits and forms of the Argalis and Musmons as 

 nearly resemble the cultivated Sheep as the Wolf and other 

 species of Canis resemble the common breeds of Dogs. Even 

 the blood of the Goat, though of a species admitted, under 

 every zoological system, to be distinct, has certainly been 



