324 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



to suspect that the Musmon and Ophion of the ancients were 

 not synonymous names for the same animal, and that the 

 Wild Sheep of Spain and the Carpathian Mountains are not 

 the Mufro of Corsica. The Spanish Wild Sheep mixed 

 however with the domestic, and the intermediate breed, ac- 

 cording to Pliny, were named Umbri. 



The Musmons of Sardinia and Corsica never quit the 

 highest ridges : where, however, the temperature allows no 

 permanent snows. They live in small herds, headed by an 

 old male, uniting occasionally into flocks of near one hun- 

 dred ; but they separate again in December and January, 

 when the rutting season commences, and the usual battles 

 have decided how many females each male can retain. The 

 females yean two lambs in April and May, which run about 

 the moment they are dropped, and are cherished and de- 

 fended with great constancy by their dams : they are not 

 adult till the third year, but the power of procreation is the 

 same as in the domestic races, and can commence at eigh- 

 teen months. In Corsica the male is denominated Mufro, 

 and the female Mufra, from which Buffbn has formed the 

 word Mouflon. Their skins are used for various purposes, 

 and in that island and Sardinia, the mountaineers still con- 

 vert them into vests, and a kind of cloaks, which may be 

 the present representatives of the Mastruca Sardorum, 

 noticed in the commentaries on Cicero, as made from the 

 skin of the Mufro : this dress was worn in particular by 

 the inland robbers, the Mastruci Latrunculi. 



It appears that in ancient times a wild species of sheep 

 inhabited Great Britain. Boetius mentions a wild breed 

 in St. Kilda, larger than the biggest goat, with tails hang- 

 ing to the ground, and horns longer and as bulky as those 

 of an ox. Mr. Pennant observes upon this subject, that 

 such an animal is figured on a bas relief taken out of the 

 wall of Antoninus near Glasgow. 



The Domestic Sheep. (0. Aries.) Whether the infinite 



