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



" it;" otherwise if " the fat thereof" and " the whole rump," had been 

 separate parts, they would not have been specified in the singular num- 

 ber, by " it shall he take off," but by " them shall he take off." We 

 thus at once perceive, that the allusion is made to the peculiar formation 

 of the hinder parts of the "Ovis steatopyga," in which the fat of the rump 

 actually descends in two lobes on either side of the tail, which it so 

 completely envelopes as to leave only the tip of it apparent, and thus 

 while it contributes to form the broad tail which characterises the spe- 

 cies, it still remains likewise a part of the rump, commencing at the 

 end of, or ' hard by the backbone,' as correctly alluded to in the above 

 passage of Leviticus. 



Further evidence, if such were necessary, may be probably gathered 

 from other passages, such as that of the 15th Chapter of Samuel, where 

 the prophet in reproving Saul, declares to him, " behold, to obey is 

 better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." Now, since 

 the Asiatic sheep are notoriously devoid of fat, unless kept up and fed, 

 the repeated mention in the Scriptures of the fat of rams, would seem to 

 point most particularly and plainly to the species under consideration, 

 which thus becomes doubly interesting, as being not only an Ante- 

 diluvian species, but a descendant from the original stock bestowed upon 

 mankind by the Almighty in the earliest ages of man's existence upon 

 the earth, and as being moreover the animal which was used in the 

 ancient sacrifices of the Jewish people. 



Thus we perceive, that so far from this animal having sprung from 

 any living wild breed, it is in all probability the most ancient of all 

 our sheep, and the stock from which the numberless domestic varieties 

 which now contribute to the comfort of mankind, have themselves 

 descended. 54 



In the same manner it might be urged, that as from the earliest 

 periods after the flood, we read in Scripture of camels, asses, oxen, 

 sheep, goats, pigeons and doves, being in a state of domestication, 

 a strong probability would seem to rise that all these species had been 

 reserved to himself by man from the period of the descent from the 



54. Capt. Hutton has, at least, here shewn satisfactorily, the great historical anti- 

 quity of the Doomba race of domestic sheep, by proving it to be the variety (and it 

 would seem the only [variety, as to this day in Afghanistan,) tended by the Hebrew 

 Patriarchs, and familiarly referred to in the Mosaic writings.— Cur. As. Soc. 



