Reference was then made to the original short-talled (Soay) sheep of Britain, The modern British sheep presented the problem of having ong tall and for years the late Professor Cossar Ewart of Edinburgh University was In search of the long tailed progenitor of the British sheep. Ho eventually found this in the fat-{tailed sheep of Central Asia, thus Mnking up the Gobt Sea and the Gob! Desert not only with the camel but} also with the sheep.
Then the heads of sheep also made a fascinating study, There were three breeds or types of sheep from this point of view—frt, male and male horned: second male horned fand female horntess; third, male and. female hornless. 'The University of Cambridge had carried out some me teresting experiments with reference to horns taking' into account. face colour" also, Thus a horned pink-face type (the Dorset Horn) had been crossed with a hornless blacked: faced type (ihe Suffolk) and no ficulty had been experienced in obtaining a hornless pink-faced type and a horned black-faced type, horns and face colour being inherited on pure Mendelian. nes, 'The problem of how a horned male came from a hornless female was, however, of more complexity and' was to be referred to the sex chromosome' or to the sox hormone or to both, 'An equally interesting problem was that of the fleece colour of sheep. "The original sheep was obviously coloured brown-grey like the Soay and the blue sheep of Jessfteld Park, 'The change to the white was interestingly recorded in' the Old Testament with reference to. Jacob and his flocks of sheep. "To-day owing {0 the constant endeavour to weed out black, most flocks of sheep were pure white, But even in the whitest flocks from-time to. time University of Leeds had shown this black to be a "recessive" or half dose with white as a "dominant". Thus there were two types of Wensleydale whites—one was a pure white which would breed pure white and the other was an "impure" which crossed with an impure. would produce 25 per cent, blacks—and without a breeding test it was impossible to pick out by sight the "pures" from the "impures". There were stranger things than this, however, with reference colour inheritance in combination, for example, wilh "texture, Thus with rough-white and smooth-coloured some weird results might be obtained by crossing the cross-breds, Skeletons and Skins Perhaps one of the strangest things with' reference to Mendelian characfers in sheep was the probable Inheritance of skeleton and skin a wholes". "Thus in every Merino Mock could be seen lambs which seemed to have Inherited the small body of the Soay sheep and the skin the larger fat-talled sheop—the kin grew in folds on a body too, small "for itt And the study of a number of sheep would almost certainly reveal the thin stretched skin of the smaller sheep over the skeleton of the. larger sheep.
Another interesting point, was the way In which fibre characteristics were Inherited. If two breeds such Merino and Wensleydale were crossed, the fibre diameter frequency curve revealed this crossing almost uncanny way. The lecturer said that he would much like to work out the diameter frequency curves fon similar line for Chinese, Euro-can, and the mixed yaoes hairs, Selentite principles of some interest might be thus rev These were a few of the interest Ing facts involved in heredity. The possibilities of the "broad-lalled sheep in China were now being explored and it" seemed likely that quite shortly it would known what was possible with reference to one fof the chief of Chinese breeds of! sheep.
Attempts at improvement _were being made along two lines, the frst being the improvement of the breed within itself and the second the improvement through eross-breeding. The latter method was being, thoroughly taken in hand at the Oberlin Memorial School in Shans 'A brief discussion brought an in teresting afternoon {oa conclusion and President Ly and the Univerily Faculties were thanked for the {rouble they had taken to render. the visit so interesting.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.