58 THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



short-tailed ; and in many works on natural history 

 domesticated sheep are referred to as if all, or 

 nearly all, were furnished with long tails. The 

 fact that many breeds are short-tailed was, however, 

 fully recognised more than half a century ago by 

 Dr. L. J. Fitzinger in the first instalment of his 

 synopsis of the breeds of domesticated sheep.^ 



Dr. Fitzinger even went so far as to regard the 

 short-tailed breeds as specifically distinct from the 

 ordinary longer-tailed sheep of the lowlands, pro- 

 posing for this supposed species the name of Ovis 

 brachyura. There is, however, undoubtedly a more 

 or less complete gradation from the short-tailed to 

 the longer-tailed breeds ; and even if this were not 

 the case, there would be no justification for bestow- 

 ing a separate scientific name on the former, as 

 most, if not all of the older breeds of Swedish 

 sheep, which must be regarded as the typical repre- 

 sentatives of the Ovis aries of Linnaeus, were short- 

 tailed. In addition to the shortness of the tail, 

 these sheep are collectively characterised by their 

 small bodily size, the relatively small, more or 

 less upright, sharply pointed ears, and the coarse, 

 shaggy, and partially hairy fleece, of which the 

 colour is frequently light brown. In most cases the 

 rams carry well-developed horns, more or less closely 

 approximating to those of the wild mouflon. 



One of the smallest, and at the same time 



' Sitzber. Ak. Wiss. Wien,yQ\, xxxviii. p. 192, 1859. 



