FOUR-HORNED SHEEP 283 
sheep may be traced eastwards across the northern districts 
of Continental Europe and Asia into China, where they 
appear to be comparatively numerous. Among the flocks of 
the nomad Tatars, the presence of four horns is associated 
with an enlargement of the base of the tail, owing to the 
deposition in that region of a large amount of fat. Although 
such a difference might be produced by crossing Icelandic 
four-horned sheep with the two-horned fat-tailed breed, 
it quite possibly indicates an altogether distinct breed. 
Moreover, Brian Hodgson, a late Anglo-Indian naturalist, 
in a paper on the tame sheep and goats of the Sub- 
Himalayas and Tibet, published in vol. xvi. of the Journal 
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1847), stated that the 
Hunia sheep of the Himalayas, which are white with black 
faces, occasionally develop four or more horns. Again, 
Darwin, in his “Animals under Domestication,’ mentions 
that merino sheep when exported to Chili display the same 
tendency. 
A breed of black and white sheep, originally natives of 
Zululand and other parts of South Africa, not unfrequently 
develop an additional pair of horns which are quite different 
in shape from those of the Icelandic breed, as indeed are 
both pairs in colour, which is black. <A flock of this breed 
is kept by the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. 
In most, if not in all cases, the two horns on each side 
of the head in these sheep are perfectly distinct and separate 
from one another at the base ; but this does not prove that 
they may not in the first instance have originated by a 
splitting or division of the young horns of the normal pair. 
In this connection it is very noteworthy that the antlers of 
deer are occasionally bifurcate for a portion or the whole of 
their length on one side of the head, although there does not 
seem to be an instance on record where such a feature occurs 
