THE SHEEP. 179 



Now there appears to me to be one piece of 

 evidence of an anatomical character which gives 

 a certain amount of countenance to this strange 

 tale. Consider for a moment the force of the 

 impact when two heavy rams, rushing at full 

 speed from thirty or forty feet apart, crash their 

 heads together. It not unfrequently happens that 

 the recoil is so sreat that both animals are flung 

 over backwards. The structure of the sheep's 

 head, whether he belongs to one of the horned 

 varieties or not, is extraordinarily adapted for 

 bearing a tremendous blow from the front, and 

 the vertebrae of the neck are so immensely 

 strong that they receive the shock without the 

 least injury. Now a sheep might fall from a 

 considerable height and alight on his head with- 

 out the force of the impact being greater than 

 that which a ram experiences when engaged in a 

 desperate combat. It would certainly be safer 

 for a sheep to fall in this way than on its com- 

 paratively frail legs, especially if it possessed 

 large and spiral horns, the resilience of which 

 would break the shock somewhat before it 

 reached the skull and the spine. 



The strange indifference shown by rams to a 

 blow on the head was demonstrated in an amus- 



