EUROPEAN MUFLON 



387 



DOMESTIC SHEEP (Ovis aries). 



The history and ancestry of the various breeds of domestic sheep are 

 lost in the mists of antiquity, and naturalists are totally unable to 

 point to the wild stock from which any or all of them are derived. 

 This is the more to be regretted, seeing that the Swedish breed is the 

 type of the genus Ovis. Most domesticated breeds differ from wild 

 sheep by the woolly nature of their coat ; but since hairy tame sheep 

 are met with in several uncivilised countries, this point of difference is 

 of comparatively little importance. More weight has been attached to 

 the great length of the tail, which is much longer than even that of 

 the arui ; and, as mentioned above, that species is almost certainly not 

 the father of the domesticated sheep. There is, however, some degree 

 of probability that the long tails of the domestic breeds are due to a 

 kind of degeneration. And if this be really the case, their ancestry 



