THE LIFE OF MAALMALS 
or less allied to that group.”” They are younger than the oxen, 
geologically. Sheepare naturally mountain dwellers, their round, 
firm hoofs, their warm winter undercoats, cultivated in domestic 
races into a heavy fleece, their ability to exist on scant herbage, 
and their keen senses are all adaptations to an alpine life and 
cold climate. Hence we find no wild sheep except on moun- 
tain ranges, and, in fact, only on those forming the “‘backbone”’ 
of central Europe and Asia and extending along the western 
side of North America. There are high mountains elsewhere, 
but the sheep seem never to have crossed the intervening 
forested lowlands. 
The species longest and best known is the mouflon of Cor- 
sica and Sardinia, still an object of the chase in the mountains 
of those islands, but frequently found by the shep- 
herds with their flocks, and probably one of the 
sources of European domestic sheep. 
Mouflon. 
As to the originals of this perhaps most valuable and least educated of 
the animals reclaimed from nature, we are in the dark; it is probable that, 
like dogs, they came from the taming of local species of various regions, 
and have modified by mixture as well as by breeding. The oldest definitely - 
known is the ‘‘peat sheep” of the early Swiss lake dwellers, which was a 
small-horned breed, apparently represented at the present day by the sheep 
of Graubinden, Germany; but at a somewhat later time the Copper-age 
people of France and the British Isles had a big-horned sheep with a strong 
infusion of mouflon blood. ‘‘The variations of external characters seen 
in the different domestic breeds are very great. They are chiefly manifested 
in the form and number of the horns, which may be increased from the 
normal two to four or even eight, or may be altogether absent in the female 
alone, or in both sexes; in the form and length of the ears, which often 
hang pendant by the side of the head; in the peculiar elevation or arching 
of the nasal bones in some Eastern races; in the length of the tail and the 
development of great masses of fat at each side of its root, or in the tail 
itself; and in the color and quality of the fleece.” 
Asia Minor and Persia have a mouflon similar to the Cor- 
sican one but larger; and a diminutive variety inhabits Cyprus, 
or formerly did so. India’s only wild sheep is the oorial (“sha” 
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