The sheep, with which we are acquainted, is only to be met with in Europe, and some of the temperate provinces of Asia; if transported into Guinea, it loses its wool, and is covered with hair, it decreases in fertility, and its flesh has no longer the same taste. It cannot subsist in very cold countries, though a breed of sheep is to be found in cold climates; especially in Iceland, who have many horns, short tails, and harsh thick wool, under which, as in almost every animal in the north is a second lining, of a softer, finer, and thicker wool. In warm countries, on the contrary, the sheep have generally short horns and a long tail, some of which are covered with wool, others with hair, and a third kind with a mixture of wool and hair. The first of these sheep of a warm country is that commonly called _Barbary sheep_, or the _Arabian sheep_, which resembles the domestic kind, excepting the tail which is so loaded with fat, as to be often more than a foot broad, and weighs upwards of twenty pounds. This sheep has nothing remarkable but his tail which he carries as if a pillow was fastened to his hinder parts. Among this kind of sheep, there are some whose tails are so long and heavy, that the shepherds are obliged to fasten small boards with wheels to them, to enable the animal to walk along. In the Levant, these sheep are cloathed with a very fine wool, while in warm countries, as Madagascar, and the Indies, they are covered with hair. The superabundance of fat, which in our sheep fixes about the kidneys, in these animals descends upon the vertebræ of the tail; the other parts of their body are less charged with it than our fed sheep. This variety is to be attributed to the climate, the food, and the care of men; for these broad, or long-tailed sheep, are domestic like ours, and even demand more care and management. This breed is much more dispersed than the common kind. They are common in Tartary, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Barbary, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and even as far as the Cape of Good Hope. In the islands of the Archipelago, and chiefly in the island of Candia, there is a breed of domestic sheep, of which Belon has given the figure and description under the name of _strepsiceros_: this sheep is of the make and size of our common kind; it is like that covered with wool, and only differs from it by the horns, which are erect, and in form of a screw.[F] [F] Sonnini observes that this race is also very common in Hungary and Austria where it is called _zackl_.