Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1925. THE ANCESTORS OF SHEEP.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 10530, 22 October 1925, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1925. THE ANCESTORS OF SHEEP.

Very few probably of the thousands of New Zealanders whose daily occupation is the handling of sheep realise the romance that lies in the evolution of the present day animal from the rude and insignificant ancestors of the race. Even breeders on scientific lines, whose aim is to evolve improved types seldom or never trouble about the origin of their highlybred flocks. Particular interest therefore attaches to a lecture recently given before the Bradford Textile Society by Professor Cossar Ewart (Regius Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University) on the evolution of the sheep. The professor stated at the outset that at the present day there were two kinds of wild sheep—a group, consisting of the Mouflons of Corsica, Sardinia, Asia Minor, and other parts of South-western Asia, and a group made up of the TJrials and Ammons of Asia, and the Bighorns of America. Though flocks of sheep fed on the great plains between the Ganges and the Jumna at the beginning of the Pliocene period, and though the horn core of a sheep was found in the Norfolk Forest bed—a deposit formed about half a million years ago— .Li. • t n • i i i

nothing definite was known about the remote ancestors of sheep. Until a few years ago, naturalists admitted that nothing was known about the wild ancestors of the sheep living under domestication. But an examination of bones collected some years ago by the American Pumpelly Expedition led to the conclusion that the wild (Trial which still lived in the mountain range between Persia ind Turkestan was domesticated .u— j. 'ynnn t> ' * i ,

about 7000 B.C. About the same time the red Mouflon was domesticated in Mesopotamia. In course of time sheep of the Mouflon type (the ewes of which were hornless), were introduced into Turkestan, with the result that a mixed race (the Turbary race), was formed, including 1 ewes of the Trial type with gnat-like horns, and hornless ewes of the Mouflon type. Before 6000 B.C. members of the round-

headed Asiatic race brought the Turbary sheep into Europe. In the Bronze Age some of the Turbary sheep from Asia were crossed with the European Mouflon. Turbary, or peat sheep (so called because their remains were found in peat), were widely distributed

over Europe during the Neolithic Age, and there were small more or less pure flocks of Turbary or peat sheep in many parts of Europe up to the middle of last century. Peat, sheep probably reached Britain about the end of the Neo-

Jitliic Age. The only pure flock of peat sheep now left was found on the small uninhabited island of Soay (meaning- “Sheep Island”) near St. Hilda. In all probability the peat sheep contributed to the making- of most of the original

British sheep and so are the forbears of the flocks being- tended in JVew Zealand at this day.