9 
A very important proposition is made by the acclimatisation 
societies of Europe, that those members who happen to have 
facilities on their estates for experiments, and who are willing to 
aid the objects of the society, should undertake the charge of 
such subjects for experiments as may be offered to them by the 
society, periodically reporting progress to the council. This 
should also be adopted on the establishment of the society in 
New South Wales. 
From the catalogue of animal life, I will now mention some 
of those valuable to be acclimatised in this colony, or, if denizens 
of this country, ought to be preserved from destruction and 
extermination. I will commence with some observations on the 
sheep, an animal whose valuable fleece forms the staple export 
article in the commerce of this colony, and state what may be 
done to add to its value by careful cultivation. 
If we take into consideration the care bestowed upon any 
domestic animal by man, and the extent of the habitable globe 
over which the species is diffused, the sheep will certainly rank 
the first; and, therefore, an animal so important to the welfare 
of mankind, every circumstance connected with it becomes of 
great and special interest. 
The origin of the sheep is involved in great obscurity. My 
distinguished friend Professor Owen observes that — “The recent 
progress of palaeontology, or the science of fossil organic remains 
_remarkable for its unprecedented rapidity — adds a new element 
to the elucidation of this question, which was so ably discussed 
by Buffon and the naturalists of the last century. At present, 
however, the evidence which palaeontology yields is of a negative 
kind. No unequivocal fossil remains of the sheep have yet been 
found in the bone caves, the drift, or the more tranquil stratified 
newer pleocene deposits, so associated with the fossil bones of 
the oxen, wild boar, wolves, foxes, otters, beavers, &c., as to indi¬ 
cate the coevality of the sheep with those species, or in such an 
altered state as to indicate them to have been of equal antiquity.” 
Wherever the truly characteristic parts, as the bony cores of the 
horns, have been found associated with jaws, teeth, and other parts 
of the skeleton of a ruminant corresponding in size and other 
characters with those of the goat and sheep in the formation of 
the newer pleocene period, such supports of the horns have 
proved to be those of the goat. No fossil horn core ot a sheep 
has yet been anywhere discovered, and so far as this negative 
evidence goes, we may infer that the sheep is not geologically 
more ancient than man ; that it is not a native of Europe ; but 
B 
