LECTURE xiri. 399 



condition they are again called races) there is a fourth species 

 in Switzerland, the wild progenitors of which are found in the 

 peat moors of Southern Sweden and England, along with the 

 TJrus and Bison, and which is called Bos frontosus. It is 

 distinguished by the convexity of the forehead between the 

 eyes, by long and outwardly curved horns, it is smaller than the 

 TJrus, but larger than the marsh-cow. It is absent in the pile- 

 buildings and in the peat bogs, but is now represented in 

 Switzerland by the so-called spotted cattle (the Simmen or 

 Saanenthal race), and has thus been introduced within histori- 

 cal times, very probably, from the North. 



" In the stone-period," says Eiitimeyer, " we find a sheep, 

 which, by its small size, slender extremities, and, still more, 

 by its upright, short, goat-like horns, differs from the com- 

 mon existing ovine races. Wauwyl alone furnished remains of 

 large and curved-horned animals. The rarity of horns ren- 

 ders it impossible to explain the supplanting of those short- 

 horned animals by the present race. On examining, however, 

 the bones of Chavannes, Echalens, &c., we find that in the 

 middle ages large curved-horned animals were widely spread.-"' 

 This peculiar small sheep, with coarse wool, may be called the 

 turf sheep. 



A wild stock, from which the goat-horned turf-sheep might 

 have been derived, no longer exists, whilst the curved-horned 

 sheep, to which belong all domesticated races, might have had 

 as its progenitor the Mediterranean Mouflon and the Asiatic 

 Argali. On the other hand, there were found in the caves of 

 the South of France, specially at Lunel-Yiel the remains of a 

 sheep resembhng the turf-sheep of the stone-period, so that 

 the species reaches back to the oldest period of the human i-ace, 

 as human bones were also found in this cave. Again, in the 

 most northern islands of England, — the Shetland and Orkney 

 Islands, as well as in the mountainous regions of Wales, and 

 finally, also in the Grisons, there is a race of sheep bred, the 

 skulls of which correspond in size, form, and shape of horns to 

 those of the turf-sheep of the stone-period. There seems, 

 therefore, no doubt that the wild turf-sheep was a native of 

 Central Europe, that it was soon subjected by man, but that it 



