PRODUCED BY MAN. 815 



development which this same boviculture has attained in Siberia, 

 and to his statement that not only have the nomads of the southern 

 steppes, the Bardts, the Mongols, and the Kirghiz, herds number- 

 ing thousands and tens of thousands wintering out in the open, but 

 that even the Jakuts (by, it is true, taking more care of their cattle) 

 have, from being simply nomads, become a pastoral people of dis- 

 tinction, and even 'improved cattle-breeders!' (' Sibirische R-eise/ 

 iv. 2, 2, p. 13:23.) 



Coming, in the second place, to the consideration of the sheep, 

 I must allow that considerable hesitation has been expressed by 

 many writers as to the question of its parent-stock; and that 

 doubt may be not altogether unreasonably felt as to whether that 

 stock may not have become extinct, as the parent-stock of the cow 

 has all but entirely done. But what I know of the deerlike agility 

 and watchfulness of some of our European mountain breeds of 

 sheep, and in the second place what I see of the smaller size of the 

 animal as giving it a less severe battle to fight for its survival, 

 makes me slow to think that their parent-stock need be thought 

 likely to have perished as has that of the larger ruminant. And 

 setting this view aside, we may say that either the Mouflon {Ovis 

 7tiusimon and c^prius), with a range from Majorca to Cyprus, and 

 not without footings, occupied by such varieties as Ovis orientalis 

 and Ovis vignei, on the mainland on various points of the mountain- 

 ranges of the Taurus and of Armenia to those of Tibet; or the 

 Argali, Ovis fera Sibirica s. Ovis argali, with an all but equally 

 extensive range from the Pamir plateau above Samareand and Bok- 

 hara to the Sea of Okhotsk as Ovis 7iivicola, or Ovis joolii, must be 

 credited with having given to the world this inestimable gift. If it 

 shall really turn out to be correct that a true Argali, that is to say 

 a variety of wild sheep, in which both sexes carry horns, had been 

 found in the Taurus, as Ainsworth (cit. A. Wagner, 'Die Geo- 

 graphische Verbreitung der Saugethiere,' Abhandl. d. ii. kl. d. Ak. 

 d. Wiss. Miinchen, Bd. iv. Abth. i. p. 139) and Bitter ('Erd- 

 kunde,' xi. 506), have averred is the case, the claims of the Argali 

 would to some persons, I apprehend, appear to be stronger^ than 

 they might if its range should, as I incline to think it will, be 

 shown to be confined to the more easterly limits just given. 

 But under any and all circumstances, the fact that the female 

 Mouflons have no horns, whilst the female Argalis have them, though 



