THE FAT-HUMPED SHEEP. 511 



tricts being as high as a new-born calf, and weighing from one 

 hundred and forty-four to one hundred and eighty pounds. 

 In shape they resemble the Indian sheep, having the arched 

 profile, prominent under lips, and large pendulous ears. The 

 rams always, and the wethers generally, are horned -, and some, 

 like the Icelandic, possess four, five, or six horns. Their wool 

 is coarse, entangled, and much mixed with hair. But the chief 

 peculiarity of this breed consists in the extraordinary accumu- 

 lation of fat, commencing on the loins, whence it swells gradu- 

 ally into a large mass at the rump, assuming the form, when 

 viewed posteriorly, of two rounded projections, almost con- 

 cealing between them the short conical tail. This mass of fat 

 weighs thirty or forty pounds, and yields from twenty to thirty 

 pounds of tallow. The tendency of these sheep to accumulate 

 fat on the haunches is supposed, by Pallas, to have been first 

 induced by the saline nature of the pasturage, and that they 

 inherit this predisposition from those of their progenitors who 

 were the first to be thus affected by this kind of food. The 

 Turcoman hordes and the natives of the Caucasian range possess 

 vast flocks of these sheep. The common Tartars often possess a 

 thousand, and some of the richer ones more than fifty thousand 

 sheep. " During the whole winter they seek their fodder under 



