RAM FIGHTS.

Western Star, Issue 1349, 27 April 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

RAM FIGHTS.

It may perhaps throw some light on the obscure causes of the stupidity of sheep to see them fight. To watch two rams engage in a duel, which they do m a most gentlemanly manner, as if it were as much,a matter of etiquette as an engagement with swords in tne environs oi Paris, is better than most farces no w-a-days. Perhaps there are some 10 or 20 rains in a yard or corral, and presently two put their Probably they ate having a conversation, and in it some debatable matter crops up, for one shakes his head impatiently, as if doubting the word of his interlocutor. THE INSULTED RAM looks up, advances a step or two, and ;they rattle their horns together. Instantly all the other gentlemen gather •round as the two intending combatants march backwards step by step with an admirable slowness and deliberation. They are the two knights at the ends of the lists. There is an instant’s pause, and then they hurl themselves violently forward to meet forehead to forehead with a shock that ought to break their skulls. “Then the solemn backward march recommences, the pauoe is made, .and the two belligerents leap at each other once more, and the terrible thud is hej,rd again. Some times they run ten courses before one turns giddy and declines the battle, but ofteuer five or six blows make the thinner skulled turn away, to be CONTEMPTUOUSLY HUSTELD in the rear by the conqueror. Occasionally the sight of one set of duellists inspires the unoccupied lookers-on with a noble ardour, and touple after couple join in to march backwards side by side, and rush foward in a line to meet the opposing forces. It seems to me that there is more interest in this than the mere farce of the display. How ever such a hibit arose, it can hardly now be advantageous to the species, and must fond to lower them iu the scale of intellect ; for while the thickest skulled remain lords, those with the most room for brains often get their craniums cracked with fatal results. This may help to explain the very uncommon IDIOCY Of DOMESTICATED SHEEP, just as the duello among the Australian black follows may throw light on the dull thick headedness of some of the native humans in that country. For their favourite method of quelling—at

least it was that of which I heard most—is to take two clubs, and having drawn lots in some manner f or the first blow, to strike the loser ou the head, as he bends down, with the utmost force possible. If that blow is not decisive—and it is not always so—it is the turn of the other man to do his best, and so on until a skull is cracked or its owner rendered insensible. It would be hard to find a nearer parallel to THE DUEL OP THE RAMS. It was at Mossgiel, in New South Wales, when I was taking some 150 of these same rams to a paddock, that I was struck by the earlieat manifestation of perfect instinct in a dog that I ever saw, lb was in a little rough-haired collie pup, whose mother belonged to a man who was travelling. As she littered at our place he was going to destroy the pups, but fortunately there was another collie suckling some at the same time, and I made her undertake the office of foster-mother for three by force. I held her down in spite of her resistance while the little fellows I had selected made a meal, and at the end of some days she did uot know the strangers from her own, and BR iUGHT THEM UP TOGETHER. I kept the most promising one for myself, and named him Bo’aon. He was ouly two months old when I took him out to the place where I was at work, and until then he had never beheld a sheep at close quarters. For three or four days I kept him tied up close to my tent, but on the fourth he got away and followed me and my big dog Sancho down to the gate of the paddock where I had just driven these rams. On reaching them I found I had left my tools for mending wire feucing behind me, and as I rode back Sancho came with me, for there was no fear they would stray fa r , being slow and steady in their ways, and also somewhat advanced in age. I had not noticed that B /sou remained behind. Oa return! ig in a few minutes, I saw, to my surprise, that THE RAMS HAD NOT SPREAD OUT TO FEED, but were bunched up together in a close mass, and that the outer ones were following the motions of something which I could not see, hut which they evidently feared. I reined in my horse, waved back Sancho, aud watched. Presently I saw woolly little Bo’son, who certainly was no bigger than the head of the least of them, paddling round and round the circle in a quiet, determined, and business like manner. 1 remained motionless and watched to see whether he was doing it by accident; but no, he made his rounds again and again, and as he did so the huge-horned rams followed him with their eyes. It was with much difficulty that I enticed him home, and from his air I have no doubt he would have gone on circling his self-imposed charge until his legs had failed him from fatigue. By the time 1 left Mossgiel he was a very promising sheep-dog. From Concerning Sheep. ” in the Cornhill Magazine. ”.