customary. Unfortunately, my communication is delayed or gone astray. I particularly reverence Professor Dawkins as the man who, long years after I had gone to New Zealand, dug up bones of the sabre-toothed lion, cave-bear, hyena, and others in an overhanging-rock cave, where, when I was a child, an old man used to stable his donkey. This was at Cresswell Craigs, on the boundary of Notts and Derbyshire.

Some twelve months ago a very good picture appeared in the Town and Country Journal, Sydney, page 541, of African sheep at the Zoological Gardens, Berlin. Three animals are represented. One is of uniform black, or dark colour, and seems to have no tail—possibly it has been cut off; fair-sized horns, bending backwards close to the head, short hair, and welldefined mane of long hairs, and long hair hanging down between the brisket and the throat. I am uncertain of the sex; it is either a ewe or wether. The ears appear to droop. The buck is dark-coloured from the top of the rump to the fore part of the shoulder; neck and thighs white; a smooth tail, white, nearly reaching to the hocks; ears white, standing out at right angles; horns as previously described; a thick rough mane and long fringe under the neck; rest of body smooth. The third (evidently a half-grown lamb) has dark and white patches of smooth hair all over, white tail, ears slightly inclined downwards, no horns; and is lying at rest. Part of the description given is as follows: “The colour of these sheep is always black-and-white, the white forming the groundwork for the black round spots which are found upon the nose, eyes, ears, and just above the hoofs. The shape of the specimens here illustrated is rather small and graceful; the profile is straight; the finely-shaped ears stand out horizontally from the head; the line of-the back is even; and the tail is of medium length. The body is curved; the limbs are slender, very similar to those of a deer. The hair is short and even, except on the buck, and even then it grows long only on the under-side of the neck. The large coloured spots which are distributed over the body are essentially black, and characteristic. The Cameroon sheep are only useful as food; but they are considered of great importance among the black population on account of their easy-fattening qualities.” Now, the only spot I detect is one black spot round the eye of the buck. One animal is entirely black, the other two have black and white in large areas, not at all to be called spots. The picture is very well done, and must give a faithful resemblance of the originals.

The African fat-tailed sheep are remarkable: the tail alone is described as weighing from 201b. to 301b., being equal in weight to the animal's body, and was considered a great delicacy, having the flavour of marrow. They are seldom met

with now. I was making inquiries through a southern paper. asking for information about hybrids between sheep and goats, when a gentleman wrote me of these sheep, saying that they were a cross between the old Dutch goat and the sheep. He sent me a sample cut from a rug made from their skins by the blacks at a mission-station. This piece of skin was covered with short, shining, white hairs, with a few very slight fibres slightly curled, requiring close inspection to detect. This resembled greatly the skin of the Angora when in summer coat. The gentleman had never seen the sheep themselves, as they were mostly superseded by the merino; but his description of the tail, and flavour of the same when cooked, though gained by hearsay, was quite correct.

I will now make a few remarks on peculiarities I have noticed among domestic sheep:—

In black and coloured crossbred and long-wool sheep a small white spot below the eye is rarely absent; but I believe that black merinos never show these two spots. Can these spots be inherited from a wild ancestor? If wanting in merinos it would point to two different wild forms or species from which these two breeds are separately descended.

It is a singular thing that we have no breed of domestic sheep with rudimentary tails, considering that man has for many generations been in the habit of excising that member, and that their near allies the goat and deer rejoice in short upturned tails like a rabbit. We have both cats and dogs naturally with short tails.

Here are two instances of inheritance which have been observed by myself. When assisting at the annual ear-marking of lambs at my neighbour's (Mr. Low, of Von River, Lake Wakatipu) I found a lamb with both ears so small that it was impossible to place the proper ear-mark thereon. On looking carefully through the sheep in the same pen I saw the mother, having the same extremely small ears as in the case of the lamb. At another ear-marking years afterwards, on the Glengarrie Station, Hawke's Bay, we were unable to ear-mark a lamb, for the one ear was wanting entirely, nor was there any orifice leading to the organ of sound within the head. Remembering my former experience, I soon found the mother, possessing a like defect.

From the Eyre Mountains, Otago, I once mustered in a mob of merinos and their produce which had been lost for some years. Among them was a young four-tooth ram, unear-marked, having small horns little larger than those of a ewe, and without convolutions or roughness. The wool was very white, having no yolk, fine, also straight, having no curl or spiral in the fibre. Unfortunately, this sheep was lost soon afterwards. From such a sheep the celebrated Mauchamp