The only remarkable exception to this limitation of ancient sheep-breeding, is the case of the Chinese. It would appear from the following evidence, that they had both sheep and goats in ancient times. The Chinese character for a sacrifice is a compound of two characters, one placed above the other; the upper one, _Yang_, is the character for _a lamb_, the lower is the character for _fire_; so that _a lamb on the fire_ denotes _a sacrifice_. See Morison’s Chinese Dictionary, vol. iii. part i. According to the mythology of the Chinese, which as well as their written characters is of high antiquity, one of the four rivers, which rise in Mount Kaen-lun and run towards the four quarters of the globe, is called the Yang-Choui, i. e. the _Lamb-River_. Thomas Stephens Davies, Esq. in Dr. Robert Thomson’s British Annual for 1837, p. 271, 277. Yang-Ching, i. e. _Sheep-city_, was an ancient name of Canton. Morison, p. 55. There is a character for the _Goat_, which means the _Yang of the mountains_, Yang being a general term like the Hebrew צאן, including both sheep and goats. Ib. p. 61, 62. In the following passage of Rufus Festus Avienus, who flourished about A. D. 400, we have a distinct testimony, that the ancient Seres, the probable ancestors of the Chinese, employed themselves in the care of sheep at the same time that they were devoted to the production of silk. Gregibus permixti oviumque boumque, Vellera per silvas Seres nemoralia carpunt. Descriptio Orbis Terræ, l. 935, 936. [371] Pallas, Spicilegia Zoologica, Fasciculus xi. pp. 43, 44. See also Bell’s History of British Quadrupeds, London, 1837, p. 433.