THE SHEEP. 177 



breeds are desperate fellows to fight, and are 

 exhibited by native potentates matched against 

 bulls and other animals. Phil Robinson tells a 

 story of a ram that was sent to the Calcutta 

 Zoological Gardens, and, since he was of no value 

 as a curiosity, the keeper thought that he would 

 make a tit-bit for a venerable tiger. The sheep, 

 however, being of a pugnacious disposition, "went 

 for " the tiger as soon as he was put into the cage. 

 The traveller goes on to tell that, after a sharp 

 tussle, the sheep killed the tiger ! Whether he 

 ate him afterwards is not related, but one would 

 not be surprised at anything in such a sheep as 

 that ! 



The immense number of varieties of sheep, 

 and the widely different characters they present, 

 prove to us that the species has been domesti- 

 cated for a very long time. If the dog was the 

 first animal tamed by man, and the goat was 

 the second, the sheep was almost certainly the 

 third. 



Naturalists are not agreed as to which of the 

 wild species our modern sheep are descended 

 from. I think it is probable that they owe their 

 origin to several kinds, including the moufflon, 

 the burrhel, and the argali. These, oddly 



M 



