154 Rough Notes on the Zoology of Candahar. £No. 170. 



merit of its tail should disappear and become as in other breeds. This 

 however is also not the case, for the doomba has long been tended in dif- 

 ferent parts of India and other countries without a reduction in the size 

 of the tail, which still continues enlarged as in the original stock. This 

 fact, therefore, goes directly to establish the 0. steatopyga as a distinct 

 and original species, which has descended from none of the living stock, 

 whether domesticated or in a state of nature. 49 Let us examine the 

 grounds on which this opinion can be maintained. First, we find that 

 sheep taken to the pastures of the broad-tails, do not gain an accession 

 of fat on the rump and tail, but remain precisely as they have always 

 been. Secondly, the broad-tails, when removed from their own pastures, 

 do not lose the singular feature from which they take their name. 

 Pasture, therefore, is clearly not the cause of this enlargement. Thirdly, 

 proofs may be given that the 0. steatopyga is the original breed con- 

 fided to the care of men even from the dawning of his abode on earth. 

 It is however contended, that all our domestic stock has sprung from 

 some one of the existing wild races, and as regards the Sheep, the 

 Musmon (0. musimonj is supposed to be the origin of our flocks. 50 — 

 Now, if we are to attend strictly to the generic characters assigned by 

 naturalists to the Musmon and our Sheep, we shall at once perceive the 

 absurdity of assigning such an origin to the latter species, — for while all 

 accounts agree that the true Sheep possess " no lachrymal sinus," and 

 that they have an interdigital hole or sac ;" the Musmon has actually 

 been removed from the genus and ranked as a Goat by no less authority 

 than C. L. Bonaparte, the present prince of Canino, because that animal 

 does possess a lachrymal opening, 51 and because it possesses no inter- 

 digital hole f 



If the absence of a lachrymary sinus in the domestic sheep were 

 true, which it is not, the want of it would prove that none of the wild 



49. Certainly not an aboriginal race, but one highly altered by domestication.— 

 Cur. As. Soc. 



50. Whether any long-tailed sheep, with horns describing more than a spiral circle, 

 could have descended from the crescent-horned and short-tailed O. musimon (which is 

 closely allied to O. Vignei), is extremely doubtful. — Cur. As. Soc. 



51. The presence of a lachrymary opening proves, however, that it is not a Goat, 

 because that genus does not possess it. T. H. — If I mistake not, (writing from 

 memory,) the Prince of Canino states, that the lachrymary sinus is wanting in the 

 Moufflon, as it is certainly is in O. tragelaphus and O. nahoor ; whereas I believe all 

 bheep possess the interdigital sinus (an easy mode, by the way, of distinguishing a leg 

 of goat-mutton ~.om one of mouton proprement dit).— Cur. As. Soc, 



