Bond.] 358 [May 17, 



general form, with the exception of its peculiar shaped tail, of our 

 common domestic sheep." 



Of the Mecca, or fat-rumped, stump-tailed sheep, he says: — " The 

 whole body is thickly covered with short, smooth, close-lying, 

 straight and stiff shining hairs, which are shorter on the face, ears 

 and legs, and beneath these there is found a short, peculiarly fine 

 wavy and elastic wool, which is finer than that of most known races 

 of sheep." The speaker had obtained a skin of this last named race, 

 and found that the covering exactly agrees with this description. A 

 micro-photograph of the wool, magnified about two hundred times, 

 shows that the fibre measures only about -g^Vo of an inch in diam- 

 eter, which is as fine as the finest Silesian wool. 



On comparing the wool received from New York, before referred 

 to, and separating the hair from the true wool, Mr. Bond found an 

 exact correspondence with the last named wool, and also with that of 

 the Mauchamp sheep. He suggested, therefore, that the Mauchamp 

 sheep might be simply a case of atavism, or reversion to an ancient 

 type. One of the legends respecting the origin of the Merino sheep 

 was that the Arabs, when they went to Spain, found only black and 

 colored sheep, and as they wanted white wool they imported white 

 rams from the East to cross with them. Other accounts say that 

 from time to time rams were imported from Morocco, which amounts 

 to the same thing, as the sheep of Morocco were undoubtedly brought 

 from Arabia. There is, however, more resemblance in the wool of 

 the coarse sheep of Spain (churro) to those with which we are now 

 familiar from Morocco, than in that of the Merino. 



The Merino sheep is undoubtedly an animal that either from mode 

 of culture, or some accidental cause, has lost the hairy part of its 

 covering, and the wool has been furnished with a liberal supply of 

 "yolk" or grease to meet the exigencies resulting from this change. 

 If descended from the Arabian sheep, may not the fat deposit of 

 the tail have been diverted to produce the greater amount of " yolk" 

 required to make this wool covering adequate for the protection of 

 the sheep from the external influences to which it was subjected? 



Mr. S. H. Scudder called the attention of the Society to 

 the close affiliation of the insects of Europe and America in 

 the Carboniferous epoch. 



Although but thirty or forty species were known on either side of 

 the Atlantic, they were in many cases referable to identical genera, 



