Genus Oris. (Linn.)
The Sheep have voluminous horns, turning outwards, and more or less spirally twisted. The outline of the face (chaffron) is convex; the ears are pointed, the nostrils long and oblique, the chin usually destitute of a beard. The limbs are feebler and more slender than in the Goats, and there is an open sac at the base of the toes on each foot. The males are not odorous.
We shall speak of the Sheep (Ovis aries, Linn.) as we have it in a domesticated condition, alone; for as we have already intimated, we consider the domestic animals as having never existed in any other than a servile state, even from their creation, though individuals may have emancipated them- selves. The Sacred Scriptures make mention of the Sheep in the very earliest of its records. It was at the fall that "the Lord God made coats of skins, and clothed” our parents; and probably the original possessors of these skins were offered up in sacrificial atonement, as we know “the firstlings of the flock’ were by Abel. And thus, no sooner had sin entered into the world than the poor sinner was, by means of this animal, typically directed to look for a covering of his soul’s nakedness to the Righteousness of Another, as well as for atonement to the shedding of His Blood. Through the interesting history of the patriarchal worship, in the substitution of a ram for Isaac, in the deliverance of Israel by the blood of the paschal lamb, and especially in the varied offerings under the law, until His coming whom they shadowed forth, the Christian delights to
