SHEEP IN SCOTLAND 39 



Another description of the Soay sheep of the sixteenth 

 century is very interesting and rather amusing on account of 

 the perplexity into which these strange goat-sheep threw the 

 writer, Bishop Jhone Leslie of Rosse. His account, published 

 in Rome in 1578, is here given in the translation made by 

 Father Dalrymple in 1596 : 



Neist this [the island of "Hirth" or St Kilda] lyis another He, hot nocht 

 inhabited, quhair nae kynd of cattail is fund, excepte sum verie wylde, 

 quhilkes to cal scheip or gait, or rathir nouthir scheip nor gait, we knawe 

 not, nor wat we weil: forby thair wylde nature, nathir haue thay wol lyke 

 a scheip; nathir beir thay hair lyke a gait, bot for nane of the twa [literal 

 translation: but they have something between the two], I can nocht tel 

 quhat. 



These accounts lay hold of the main features of the 

 strange Soay sheep as they still exist the wild nature, the 

 goat-like carriage and movement, the "tallie" or drab colour, 

 the hair overlaid by wool, the long, curved and massive 

 horns. Boece's reference to " long tails " is most likely an 

 error of description, but may indicate that a character in- 

 duced by earlier domestication has been lost during the 

 intervening four centuries of wild life, for to-day the tails of 

 Soay sheep are as short as those of their wild ancestors. 

 To these characteristics it may be added that the Soay sheep 

 are less than they once were and are gradually becoming 

 smaller, so that, instead of being "gretar than ony gait buk," 

 if we are to believe Boece, they are now regarded by Mr 

 H. J. Elwes as the "smallest aboriginal sheep now known 

 to exist as a pure breed." 



How then has the influence of man told on ancestral 

 characters in this early stage in the domestication of the 

 sheep? The characters of the domesticated race are still 

 essentially those of the wild Mouflon, whence it mainly 

 derived its inheritance, for Professor Ewart finds no marked 

 difference between Soay sheep and the Mouflon in skeleton, 

 horns or throat fringe. The size is somewhat less, due no 

 doubt to scanty fare, and to long confinement on a small 

 island and consequent close interbreeding. The predom- 

 inance of hair in the Mouflon has been replaced by a 

 predominance of wool in the Soay race, whose coat was 

 recently declared by Mr H. Sanderson, Galashiels, a manu- 

 facturer of tweeds, to be "finer in the staple than any other 



