_'M THE WORLDS MEAT FUTURE 



was practically on the skin. The legs arc extremely Long, thin, 

 and badly fleshed. The barrel is gaunt, Hat-sided, narrow- 

 chested, no depth, and the spine projects. The head is un- 

 commonly large and ugly, with protruding eye sockets, aquiline. 

 hum-, and. as with other breeds, long lop ears. The neck is 

 very long and thin, and the head is usually supported hanging 

 down close to the ground. The tail is long, and tapers to the 

 tip, which usually brushes the ground. The sheep may be a 

 patch-work colour scheme of black, fawn, brown, and white, 

 generally two at a time. Its covering is the nearest approach 

 1" donkey's hair I have seen. In length it is about an inch on 

 the body, but increases to 3 or 4 inches on the tail and lower 

 breeches. In winter this hair covering is supplemented by a 

 growth of very fine and soft short wool, equal in texture to 

 ordinary .Merino. This supplementary growth was more in 

 evidence over the loins, and at the time of the writer's'inspec- 

 tion, early summer, the cobweb-like fibres were already coming 

 away from the skin. This reminds one of early sheep evolution. 

 The Sudani " wool " is set down as worthless. The flocks of 

 this breed are so scattered, and the quantity of actual wool 

 from each sheep is so small (only three or four ounces) that it 

 is impracticable to obtain sufficiently large quantities to be 

 marketable. Our soldiers refer to these sheep in many cases 

 '" as the goats which the Indian troops eat." 



Incidentally it might be mentioned that in all Egyptian 

 abattoirs sheep after slaughter are blown up by hand-bellows, 

 the nozzle of which is inserted through a small slit made in the 

 skin on the inside of the hind leg. The air does not escape, 

 and the sheep's form swells to huge proportions. Arab boys 

 apparently delight to beat the inflated, forms with sticks in 

 oirhr to loosen the pelt from the superficial fascia. Without 

 this 1 1 eatment some of the sheep are as hard to skin as suburban 

 1 Mm -cats. The skin of the Sudani breed is very thick, and the 

 pelts are more valuable than those of other breeds. 



Animal fat is very scarce in this country, and a strong 

 prejudice exist- against, a sheep without a fat tail, which is 

 almost an essential to the sheep's existence under local environ- 

 ment. In times of plenty fat is stored up on the tail, and when 

 food is scarce it is said that the sheep absorbs more or less of 





