CAVICORNIA. 373 
and its influences, the substantia compacta of the bones in all ruminants loses 
in hardness and weight, making the spongiosa more prominent. <A further proof 
exists in the deep furrowing and roughness of the exterior of the cores, which is 
always an evidence of adult age. 
In ascending through the culture-strata the horn-cores of the sheep become 
smaller and more slender and, in the larger forms, almost two-edged in cross- 
section. The conclusion is easy to draw that we have here the successive remains 
of the domesticated wild sheep, gradually altered in character through the process 
of domestication, which began with the taming of the ancestral form represented 
in the lower culture-strata. 
Ovis aries palustris Riitimeyer. (See plate 75, fig. 2; plate 76, figs. 5-7; plate 83, fig. 2.) 
The sheep represented in the fully preserved calvarium (No. 21) from +23 
feet in the eneolithic culture-strata Ib is, according to all the characteristics 
of the horn-cores, which are two-edged along almost their whole length, an Ovis 
aries palustris, a ‘‘turbary sheep’’ of Riitimeyer, in a form which closely resembles 
those found by Studer* and by Glurf in the Swiss lake-dwellings of Lake Bienne. 
It is a form with a little larger horn than those of this breed still living in Wales 
and Iceland and in small numbers in the mountains of the Grisons. But is it 
possible that a tame turbary sheep (Torfschaf) can have originated from a wild 
Ovis vignet arkal Lydekker? 
In a former memoir Gaillard and I{ undertook to show that C. Keller§ was 
wrong in his view that the turbary sheep was derived from the African Barbary 
sheep (Ammotragus tragelaphus). We reached the conclusion, then, that Ovis 
vignet must have been the ancestral form of the turbary sheep, and although we 
had at that time no direct proof to offer, it must be the case on account of the 
horns, which present the distinguishing, if not the only, characteristic of the 
turbary sheep. 
The horns of the Barbary sheep develop, according to my investigations 
on more than twenty heads of young lambs of Ammotragus tragelaphus, in round 
and cone-shaped structures which retain the conical form till late old age. In the 
turbary sheep (at least that which C. Keller considers to be the so-called Nalpser- 
schaf, from the Alp-Nalps in Canton Grisons) the young horn is pressed wholly 
flat and scabbard-like. I have confirmed this on individuals which C. Keller himself 
bought for the zoological park of Ziirich, and which later came to me by purchase 
and are now in my experimental flock, where they are being studied with reference 
to the question of their derivation. Further, this peculiarity is clearly recog- 
nizable in the English turbary sheep of Wales and the Hebrides. 
Now, the lamb and the female of Ovis vigner show the same form of horn- 
sheath, as will be seen in the picture; but since my researches on the origin and 
*Studer, Th., Die Tierwelt in den Pfahlbauten des Bielersees. Mitteilungen Naturf. Gesell., Bern, 
11 Heft, 1882. 
+Glur, G., Beitraege zur Fauna der Pfahlbauten. Mitteilungen Naturf. Gesell., Bern, 1894. 
t Duerst & Gaillard, Studien ueber die Geschichte des aegyptischen Hausschafes. Receuil de travaux 
relatifs 4 la philologie et l’archéologie égyptiennes, vol. XxIv, pp. 44-76. Paris. 
§C. Keller, Die Abstammung des Buendnerschafes und Torfschafes. Schweiz. Naturf. Versammlung, 
Chur, 1900.—Die Abstamm. d. alt. Haustiere. Ziirich, 1902. 

