342 APPENDIX. 



by Rutimeyer ('Fauna der Pfahlbauten,' p. 129) of the 'dun-faced,' 

 'flounder-tailed/ ' brevicauda' 'goat-horned' variety of the sheep still 

 existing in the islands north of the Pentland Firth, will see how difficult 

 it must be to decide the question as to the absence or presence of the 

 sheep at any particular prehistoric period, unless an entire skull be 

 available for deciding the question. Nor is the variation which gives to 

 the horns of the sheep, usually considered the most distinctive portion 

 in the prehistoric skeletons left us, the shape of those of the goat, by any 

 means confined to the Orkney or Shetland sheep. The same approach to 

 the goat's character is noted of the horns of the "Welsh higher mountain 

 breed (Low, Fr. ed. p. 20, Eng. ed. p. 65) of sheep. Hence it is en- 

 tirely unsafe to decide from the often fragmentary and detached horn- 

 cores which we obtain from neolithic burials that the animal they be- 

 longed to was not a sheep. 



But, secondly, though a sheep may have the horn-cores usually found 

 in goats, a goat never has the horn-cores usually found in sheep. But 

 such may be found in prehistoric interments \ 



1 Since writing as above I have, through the kindness of Herren Edmund von 

 Fellenberg and Grossrath Burki in Bern, of Professor F. A. Forel of Lausanne, and 

 of Dr. Uhlmann at Munch enbuchsee, had opportunities for examining the very rich 

 collections of animal bones from the various lake-dwellings which owe so much to 

 their protecting care. And I found that the caution which is necessary in dealing 

 with the scanty and often imperfect remains available to me from our prehistoric 

 graves is superfluous in face of their abundant and more complete specimens. The 

 goat is richly and unambiguously represented in the stone-age lake-dwellings, and 

 more abundantly indeed than the sheep in the early stone-age lake-dwellings of 

 Moosseedorf. It seems however to have lost this numerical preponderance towards 

 the end of the stone period, and to have become comparatively scarce in the bronze 

 age. And I find that M. Kinberg, 'Stockholm Internat. Congres Anth.,' p. 831, 

 tells us of Sweden that ■ La Chevre Capra hircus h. parait avoir e"te* primitivement 

 plus rare que le mouton. Elle est rare du moins dans les sepultures de l'age de la 

 pierre de la Vestergbtlande.' These facts are entirely in keeping with the sus- 

 picions hinted at in the text, and with the view that our domestic animals, though 

 coming in the ultimate resort from the East, like nephrite and jade in the stone-, and 

 bronze probably in the bronze-period, did not reach the regions north of the Alps 

 directly from the East, but only by passing northwards from the Greek and Italian 

 peninsulas. For the goat, as has been repeatedly observed from the time of Aristotle 

 ('Hist. An.' ix. 4) down to the present, bears cold less well than the sheep, whilst every 

 traveller in sunburnt barren countries may observe with gratitude and wonder what 

 copious supplies of milk are obtained from it, often off but limited areas in these 

 surroundings, and from but shrubs and weeds. The sheep on the other hand, is, as its 

 resting-places on the ' Schatten-seite ' of a mountain show us, more sensitive to heat 

 and more appreciative of the ' shadow of a great rock in a weary land ' than most 

 animals. As described in the beautiful translations of a modern Greek ballad, by 

 Niebuhr and Miss Winkworth (' Life and Letters,' vol. ii. p. 23, ed. 1852), it loves the 

 'still cold foantain' of the 'many fountained ' mountain-top, iroXviridafcos dfcpccpeirjs, 



