The great curving horns of the wild sheep have always exercised more or less influence on people’s imagination, and have given rise to various fables.  These horns are large in proportion to the animal, and so peculiar that it has seemed necessary to account for them on the theory that they had some marvelous purpose.  The familiar tale that the horns of the males were used as cushions on which the animal alighted when leaping down from great heights is old.  A more modern hypothesis which promises to be much shorter lived is that advanced a year or two ago by Mr. Geo. Wherry, of Cambridge, England, who suggested that “The form of the horn and position of the ear enables the wild sheep to determine the direction of sound when there is a mist or fog, the horn acting like an admiralty megaphone when used as an ear trumpet, or like the topophone (double ear trumpet, the bells of which turn opposite ways) used for a fog-bound ship on British-American vessels to determine the direction of sound signals.”

It is, of course, well understood, and, on the publication of Mr. Wherry’s hypothesis, was at once suggested, that there are many species of wild sheep, and that the spiral of the horn of each species is a different one.  Moreover, within each species there are of course different ages, and the spiral may differ with age and also at the same age to some extent with the individual.  In some cases, the ear perhaps lies at the apex of a cone formed by the horn, but in others it does not lie there.  Moreover this hypothesis, like the other and older one, in which the horns were said to act as the jumping cushion, takes no account of the females and young, which in mists, fogs, and at other times, need protection quite as much as the adult males.  The old males with large and perfect horns have to a large extent fulfilled the function of their lives—­reproduction—­and their place is shortly to be taken by younger animals growing up.  Moreover they have reached the full measure of strength and agility, and through years of experience have come to a full knowledge of the many dangers to which their race is exposed.  It would seem extraordinary that nature should have cared so well for them, and should have left the more defenseless females and young unprotected from the dangers likely to come to them from enemies which may make sounds in a fog.

The old males with large and perfect horns have come to their full fighting powers, and do fight fiercely at certain seasons of the year.  And it is believed by many people that the great development of horns among the mountain sheep is merely a secondary sexual character analogous to the antlers of the deer or the spurs of the cock.

Most people who have hunted sheep much will believe that this species depends for its safety chiefly on its nose and its eyes.  And if the observations of hunters in general could be gathered and collated, they would probably agree that the female sheep are rather quicker to notice danger than the males, though both are quick enough.