This breed consists of numerous sub-varieties, differing in all their characteristics of size, fleece, color, etc., with quite as many and marked shades of distinction as the modern European varieties. In Madagascar, they are covered with hair; in the south of Africa, with coarse wool; in the Levant, and along the Mediterranean, the wool is comparatively fine; and from that of the fat-rumped sheep of Thibet the exquisite Cashmere shawls of commerce are manufactured. Both rams and ewes are sometimes bred with horns, and sometimes without, and they exhibit a great diversity of color. Some yield a carcass of scarcely thirty pounds, while others have weighed two hundred pounds dressed. The tail or rump varies greatly, according to the purity and style of breeding; some are less than one-eighth, while others exceed one-third of the entire dressed weight. The fat of the rump or tail is esteemed a great delicacy; in hot climates resembling oil, and in colder, suet. It is doubtful whether sheep are indigenous to Great Britain; but they are mentioned as existing there at very early periods. AMERICAN SHEEP. In North America, there are none, strictly speaking, except the Rocky Mountain breed, already mentioned. The broad-tailed sheep of Asia and Africa were brought into the United States about seventy years ago, under the name of the Tunisian Mountain sheep, and bred with the native flocks. Some of them were subsequently distributed among the farmers of Pennsylvania, and their mixed descendants were highly prized as prolific, and good nurses, coming early to maturity, attaining large weight, of a superior quality of carcass, and yielding a heavy fleece of excellent wool. The principal objection made to them was the difficulty of propagation, which always required the assistance of the shepherd. The lambs were dropped white, red, tawny, bluish, or black; but all, excepting the black, grew white as they approached maturity, retaining some spots of the original color on the cheeks and legs, and sometimes having the entire head tawny or black. The few which descended from the original importations have become blended with American flocks, and have long ceased to be distinguishable from them. The common sheep of Holland were early imported by the Dutch emigrants, who originally colonized New York; but they, in like manner, have long since ceased to exist as a distinct variety.