ORDER RUM1NANTIA. 3*23 



original stock. The females are in general without horns, 

 and of all the wild species of sheep they have the chaffron 

 most arched, and are said to be the least intelligent and 

 hardy. This form of the nasal bones is found to increase 

 with the degeneracy of the domestic breed of both goats 

 and sheep, and is even an unfavourable character in the 

 Horse ; and we might be led to suspect that the Mufro of 

 Corsica is not a genuine wild animal, but an African do- 

 mestic breed once imported, and only partially restored to 

 its primitive characters, by the security of its insular situa- 

 tion from carnivorous animals, after it had escaped to the 

 rocks from the influence of man. Columella, who in the 

 reign of Claudius, crossed the breed of his Tarentine sheep 

 with wild rams brought to Gades from Africa, and which 

 were of a singular colour, would not have looked for the 

 African, if the Musmon of Spain, then abundant upon all 

 the mountains of the Peninsula, had been viewed by him as 

 the same animal ; nor could the Argalis of Africa which are 

 at present known, be the kind mentioned, for their rufous 

 colour is not singular, but very common in Barbary. Yet 

 this extraordinary colour remained for successive genera- 

 tions, though the hair was replaced by wool ; and we find 

 that the Morocco sheep are very generally marked with 

 spaces of chocolate or liver-coloured brown : that these races 

 have also an arched chaffron, long legs, more or less hair 

 among their fleeces, and the points of the horns turned in- 

 wards. The Musmons are distinguished, it is true, by a 

 very short tail, and by the black colour of the mouth and 

 tongue ; but the variations in the tail are common among the 

 different domestic breeds, and partially black mouths are not 

 more rare, than a similar distinction in certain breeds of ter- 

 rier dogs. Of the facility of breeding this species with our do- 

 mestic sheep, proof was obtained from the specimen brought 

 to England by the celebrated Pascal Paoli, which was the 

 parent of a mixed progeny here; hence, there is some ground 



