Guide to the great fame animals (Ungulata) in the Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History) : Illustrated by 53 text and other figures.

  • British Museum (Natural History). Department of Zoology.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Guide to the great fame animals (Ungulata) in the Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History) : Illustrated by 53 text and other figures. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [Pavilion at end of Lower Mammal Gallery. Cases 47 & 48.] family-parties; the old males generally keeping apart from the rest. Although essentially mountain animals, Sheep generally frequent open undulating districts, rather than the precipitous heights to which Goats are partial. A number of breeds of domesticated Sheep are exhibited in the North Hall, among which special attention may be directed to one from the West Indies (originally a native of Africa) cha- racterised by its hairy coat, the colour of which is very similar to that of the wild Urial Sheep of the Punjab exhibited in the Lower Mammal Gallery. Other breeds of Ovis aries (as domesticated sheep are called) are characterised by the development of a mass of fat on the buttocks, while in others, again, the long tail becomes flattened and loaded with fat. Specimens of both these breeds are shown. Yet other Sheep are distinguished by the development of an additional pair of horns; specimens of two distinct Four- horned breeds, one from the Hebrides and the other from South Africa, being exhibited. Very remarkable is the spiral-horned Wallachian Sheep (O. aries strepsiceros), characterised by the straight corkscrew-like spiral of the horns, as shown in a mounted ram. This type of horn passes, however, into the ordinary form, through breeds allied to the Indian Hunia Fighting-Sheep,, of which a ram is shown. The long tail of most breeds of tame Sheep is probably a result of domestication, as the Indian Urial and the Sardinian Mouflon, one or both of which probably represents the ancestral stock, are short-tailed. Bighorn Sheep The Sheep of the Rocky Mountains of North America locally known as the “Bighorn,” Ovis canadensis, etc. anc[ scientifically as Ovis canadensis (or O. cervina), is the type of a group of large Sheep characterised by the comparative smoothness of the strongly angulated horns, in which the outer front angle is very prominent, while the inner one is rounded off. The gland on the face is very small. The true Bighorn (1052) is a khaki-coloured Sheep with a large white rump-patch. The Black Bighorn (O. stonei, 1053) of the Sticheen and Liard River districts is, on the other hand, a dark-coloured animal; while the White Bighorn (0. dalli, 1054) of Alaska is almost pure white : both these having narrower and more pointed horns and smaller ears than the true Bighorn. The Grey Bighorn