DOMESTICATED MAMMALS AND THEIR USES 227 
sheep, z.e. the Barbary Sheep (Ovzs tragelaphus), is now peculiar 
to North Africa, and another, the Mouflon or Musimon (0. 
musimon, fig. 1163), is limited to Corsica and Sardinia, though 
it probably once had a wider distribution. One or both these 
species have possibly contributed a strain towards the formation 
of our ordinary tame 
varieties. 
As dwellers among 
mountains and rocky 
uplands, Sheep oc- 
cupy a different place 
in nature from Oxen, 
and being close 
browsers are able to 
live comfortably on 
herbage quite unsuit- 
able for horned stock, 
as may be seen in the 
barren ‘‘sheep-walks” 
of Central Wales. 
The practical impor- 
tance of this is suf- 
ficiently obvious. In 
assessing the value of 
these animals from the 
economic stand-point, 
we have to reckon 
not only with meat 
and, to a less extent, 
milk, but also with 
wool, a material that 
has played an important part in the history of textile industries. 
In the colder parts of the globe clothing of some sort ranks as 
a necessity, which the prehistoric hunter supplied by roughly 
stitching together the skins of various animals, sinews being used 
as thread. This kind of clothing is still in vogue among many 
savage or half-civilized races. Lord Avebury thus speaks (in 
Prehistoric Times) of the Esquimaux in this connection -—“ The 
clothes of the Esquimaux are made from the skins of reindeer, 
seals, and birds, sewn together with sinews. For needles they 
Fig. 1163.—The Mouflon (Ovis meusimon) 
