ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS BOG 
These cattle are ordinarily solid red in color, but in rare instances 
a calf is dropped that is solid w/zte except its ears and muzzle, 
which are invariably red or brown, closely resembling the modern 
wild white cattle of the parks.} 
The sheep (Ovis aries). Here again domestication took 
place so long ago that its history is lost, and no man can say 
what were the precise species that furnished the foundation 
for our domesticated forms. 
Certain it is that wild ani- 
mals of the sheep kind are 
and have been common on 
the earth in nearly all moun- 
tain regions of proper 
latitude. 
There is no grander 
specimen of the wild sheep 
in all the earth than the big- 
horn of the Rocky Moun- Fic. 44. The Dorset, an English horned 
tains, Ovts canadensts. nee sat tira races a 
Standing three and a half 
feet high at the withers (full-grown males), with strong, well-knit 
legs supporting a muscular body covered with a dense coat of 
light brown hair fading to a dirty white beneath, carrying through- 
out a dense coat of “shining white underwool,”’ this animal as a 
whole is a striking specimen, even without reference to the head, 
which is, after all, the distinguishing feature of the bighorn. 
This head is composed of a massive skull supporting a pair 
of truly immense horns, sweeping upward and backward, then 
1 This is “ reversion,” or resemblance to a remote ancestor rather than to 
the true parent, about which more was said in earlier chapters. The same 
thing happens in nearly all breeds, and it is so common that a visit to large 
stockyards like those of Chicago rarely fails to find at least one specimen of 
this kind. Riding past a freight train standing on a siding, not long since, I 
saw in bold relief among the cattle on one of the cars the characteristic dirty 
white face, upturned slanting horns, and red ears of the Chillingham cattle. It 
was an accidental product of an Illinois herd on his way to market, — mute wit- 
ness of a history that is passing fast and must soon be read only in the books. 
