i82 THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



with them one hundred of the best and finest- 

 woolled of these sheep, which they brought to 

 Syrmien. These were carefully tended, with the 

 result that the breed was firmly established in this 

 part of Eastern Europe. Early in the nineteenth 

 century the breed extended into Hesse.^ These 

 sheep are chiefly valued for their- abundant fleeces 

 of fine, although short, wool. 



In Naples these sheep are known as pecare 

 nioscie, in allusion to the " woolly " character of 

 their broad and fat tails. 



Fat-tailed sheep are found in North Africa from 

 Morocco to Egypt, and have been divided into 

 three breeds — the Barbary or Algerian, the Tuni- 

 sian, and the Egyptian — although it is not easy to 

 formulate distinctive characters for these. Writing 

 of all these collectively. Colonel Hamilton Smith 

 states that, as compared with other broad-tailed 

 breeds, they are more rufous on the neck, legs, tail, 

 ears, and nose. The wool is long and coarse and 

 the chaffron not much arched ; while the ears are 

 pendulous, and the horns of the rams somewhat 

 like miniatures of those of the wild urial. The tail, 

 which reaches about to the hocks, is broader at the 

 base than the buttocks, and is carried with the tip 

 projecting forward between the hind-legs. 



Tunisian fat-tails were introduced into the 

 United States so long ago as the year 1799, and 

 ' Fitzinger, op. cit., p. 175. 



