156 Rough Notes on the Zoology of Candahar. [No. 170. 



try where the Ark rested. They were therefore part of the stock which 

 Abraham and Lot possessed, and which, after them, Jacob tended while 

 serving Laban for his daughter Rachel. This opinion seems moreover 

 to be well supported by the fact, that the general colour of the breed is 

 the same now as in that early period ; for we read that Jacob's hire was 

 to consist of all the ring-straked, speckled, and spotted among the goats, 

 and of all the brown among the sheep ; and it is easy therefore, without 

 the aid of a miracle, to see how his flocks increased while those of 

 Laban diminished ; since to this day, there are few domestic goats with- 

 out some speck or spot of white, and since the prevailing colour of the 

 Tymunnee broad-tailed sheep is brown of various shades ! 



It was indeed an arrangement well calculated then, as it would be 

 still, to enrich the one party and impoverish the other, and if we only 

 allow that Jacob was an observing shepherd, and had learned by expe- 

 rience that " like breed like," the secret of his great success is at once 

 made manifest. 



With Jacob therefore and his sons, they were taken up into Egypt in 

 the time of the famine under Pharaoh's reign, when the land of Goshen 

 was allotted for a residence to the Israelites ; and of course, from thence 

 they accompanied that people throughout their wanderings into the 

 promised land, after the Exodus from Egypt, and from thence again they 

 became diffused through all the neighbouring states and kingdoms : 

 unless, indeed, as is most probably the case, they occurred there already, 

 as the nations which were then in the land had equally with the Israelites 

 descended from the Ark. 52 



Now, that the sheep known to the Jews was the Ovis steatopyga, 

 would seem to be amply proved from the 29th Chap, of Exodus, where, 

 at the 2 2d verse, in describing the manner of a certain sacrifice to be 

 offered up, it is written, " thou shall take of the ram the fat and the 

 rump, and the fat that covereth the inwards, and the caul above the liver, 

 and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and the right should- 

 er ; for it is a ram of consecration." 



Here there is evidently a marked difference made between the fat of 



the tail and the fat of the inwards and kidneys, for the words " the fat 



52. So, Captain Hutton might also argue, are the aborigines of both Americas, 

 of Australia, Polynesia, and the countries generally to the E. and SE. of the Bay of 

 Bengal, in which latter Sheep have only recently been introduced, and are as yet pos- 

 sessed wholly by the European residents.— Cur. As. Soc. 



