[Illustration: _Photo by the Duchess of Bedford_] [_Woburn Abbey._
The musk-ox is nearly allied to the sheep. It is about the size of Highland cattle, and inhabits Arctic America and Northern Greenland.]
It will be seen from the above accounts of the whole wild bovine race that they all exhibit in a high degree many of the traits which are seen in domesticated animals of the same tribe. The chief differences made by man's selection and breeding affect the form of the body and the development of the udder, otherwise there is no great modification, except the production of the drooping ear in some of the Indian species of domesticated oxen. No wild cattle have the level, flat back and rectangular body which mark all the best shorthorns and other breeds intended for beef. In the Asiatic and Galla humped breeds, the races which first domesticated the original wild species seem to have used the long processes of the vertebræ which cause the back of many wild cattle to form a hump as the basis of a valuable feature, the hump becoming as it were another joint of meat. The development of the udder has for untold centuries been the object of the breeders of cows; consequently we find that in the domesticated races this has become abnormally large. There is at present a very general tendency to get rid of the horns among all breeds of high quality, as these appendages cause much loss by wounds inflicted by cattle upon each other; but even in this respect sentiment rather tends to preserve the horns as an ornament in some of the best milking breeds, such as the Jerseys.
The sheep are represented at the present time by several wild species, one of which is found in Northern India east of the Indus, in the Punjab, and in Sind; one in North America; and another in North Africa. The rest inhabit the high ground of Europe and Asia as far south as the Himalaya. These mountains, with the adjacent plateaux of the Pamirs and the great ranges of Central Asia, form the main home of the group. Wild sheep are of various types, some so much like the goats that it is difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line between them; while others, especially the Curly-horned Argalis, Bighorns, Oorial, and Kamchatka Wild Sheep, are unmistakably ovine in type. The wild original of the domesticated breeds of sheep is unknown; but the extreme differences between various breeds of tame sheep--as, for instance, between the smooth-coated, drooping-eared breed of Nubia and the curly-horned, woolly sheep of Dorsetshire--must not be allowed to divert the attention from the considerable likeness of habit which still remains between other breeds and the wild species. Domesticated sheep which live on hills and mountains are still inclined to seek the highest ground at night. The rams fight as the wild rams do, and many of them display activity and powers of climbing and of finding a living on barren ground scarcely less remarkable than in the wild races. The apparent absence of wool in the latter does not indicate so great a difference as might be thought. The domesticated sheep have been bred by artificial selection for unnumbered ages in order to produce wool. It is said that in some of the wild breeds there is an under-fur which will "felt" like wool. Most of the species are short-tailed animals, but this is not the case with the Barbary wild sheep.