816 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



smaller in. size no doubt than those of the male, when coupled with 

 the fact that in the older breeds of domestic sheep both sexes carry 

 horns, appears to me to be conclusive in favour of the Central 

 Asiatic Wild Sheep. As re^^ards the Natural History arguments 

 I shall content myself, and I daresay others also, by referring^ to 

 the already quoted eleventh fascicle of Pallas's ' Spicilegia,^ and to 

 Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's ' Histoire Naturelle,' iii. pp. 86-87, 

 ibique citata, but I would add a couple of facts from the linguistic 

 side of the mass of arguments available for deciding the question. 

 The first of these is as follows : —The early Accadian inhabitants of 

 the plains of Babylonia, when they gave an epithet to an animal, 

 very frequently chose it from the locality whence they supposed the 

 animal to have been derived. And the epithet which they be- 

 stowed upon the sheep was ' num,' or ' numma 2/ which means *" the 

 highlands,' and which, as applied by people living in those wide 

 plains, and as being applied by them to the wolf also, has a 

 very obvious significance. It is true, as anybody may convince 

 himself by consulting Bochart's ' Hierozoicon,' ii. 3, p. 516, that 

 poets and other writers, Aryans and Semites, Greeks, Romans, 

 and Arabians indifferently, have connected the sheep, as they saw 

 its habits, with mountainous scenery and surroundings ; what is of 

 special importance in the epithet as used in the Accadian column of 

 the bilingual Assyrian inscriptions is, that it was used in such a 

 country and in such early, not to say such unpoetical, times. 



My second linguistic fact tells, as it seems to me, strongly in 

 favour of not merely the Asiatic but of the Mongolian origin of 

 the domestic sheep ; it appears, I mean, to point to a more or less 

 limited area in the wide field of Asia as having been the particular 

 spot, or at any rate one of the particular spots, where a wild sheep 



^ I may add a few words from the already quoted memoir by Andreas Wagner, 

 I.e., p. 137: 'Hochasien ist recht eigentlich das Vaterland der Wildschafe und 

 Wildziege, die hier in zahlreicher Menge und in sehr verschiedenen Formen vor- 

 handen sind. Ob diese alle gesonderte Arten oder nicht vielmehr viele von ihnen 

 nur Raasen von Hauptarten ausmachen, ist eine Frage die noch lange nicht beant- 

 wortet est.' Mr. Wallace's suggestion ('Geographical Distribution,' vol. i. p. 232) 

 that the vast plateau of Central Asia may, in comparatively recent geological times, 

 have been much less elevated, and may then have been much more fertile than it is 

 now, deserves more than this simple mention. 



2 For these facts see the Rev. W. Houghton ' On the Mammalia of the Assyrian 

 Sculptures,' Trans. Soc. Biblical Archaeology, v. i, 1876, pp. 3-7, ibid. 2, 1877, p. 42. 

 ♦Gleanings from the Natural History of the Ancients,' 1879, pp. 12-89. 



