Page:Acclimatisation; its eminent adaptation to Australia.djvu/11

9 A very important proposition is made by the acclimatisation societies of Europe, that those members who happen to have facilities on their estates for experiments, and who are willing to aid the objects of the society, should undertake the charge of such subjects for experiments as may be offered to them by the society, periodically reporting progress to the council. This should also be adopted on the establishment of the society in New South Wales.

From the catalogue of animal life, I will now mention some of those valuable to be acclimatised in this colony, or, if denizens of this country, ought to be preserved from destruction and extermination. I will commence with some observations on the sheep, an animal whose valuable fleece forms the staple export article in the commerce of this colony, and state what may be done to add to its value by careful cultivation.

If we take into consideration the care bestowed upon any domestic animal by man, and the extent of the habitable globe over which the species is diffused, the sheep will certainly rank the first; and, therefore, an animal so important to the welfare of mankind, every circumstance connected with it becomes of great and special interest.

The origin of the sheep is involved in great obscurity. My distinguished friend Professor Owen observes that—"The recent progress of palæontology, or the science of fossil organic remains—remarkable for its unprecedented rapidity—adds a new element to the elucidation of this question, which was so ably discussed by Buffon and the naturalists of the last century. At present, however, the evidence which palæontology yields is of a negative kind. No unequivocal fossil remains of the sheep have yet been found in the bone caves, the drift, or the more tranquil stratified newer pleocene deposits, so associated with the fossil bones of the oxen, wild boar, wolves, foxes, otters, beavers, &c., as to indicate the coevality of the sheep with those species, or in such an altered state as to indicate them to have been of equal antiquity." Wherever the truly characteristic parts, as the bony cores of the horns, have been found associated with jaws, teeth, and other parts of the skeleton of a ruminant corresponding in size and other characters with those of the goat and sheep in the formation of the newer pleocene period, such supports of the horns have proved to be those of the goat. No fossil horn core of a sheep has yet been anywhere discovered, and so far as this negative evidence goes, we may infer that the sheep is not geologically more ancient than man; that it is not a native of Europe; but