The Koodoo combines many of the characteristics of the sheep, ox, and antelope. He is a large and beautiful animal, a native of the woodlands of Caffraria, the male standing four feet high, and from the insertion of the tail to the muzzle measuring about eight. The horns rise perpendicularly in large spiral whorls, three feet nine inches in length; a bristling of black hairs runs along the ridge of the neck, and a line of the same color hangs from the dewlap: the general color is brown, fading into grey, with a dorsal stripe of white, and stripes of the same color behind the shoulders and across the back. They are fleet but can not run long.
More nearly allied to the deer, from which they are distinguished by their horns being permanent and without antlers, but marked with circular elevated rings, which increase, in size with their growth and years, one or two species alone exhibit a short ramification.
THE MOUFFLON.
This is a sort of sheep living wild on the mountains of Corsica and Sardinia; a similar species is also scattered over European Turkey and some of the islands of the Archipelago. They are about the ordinary size of sheep, and breed with the domestic races. The head is long, with the muzzle compressed, the nose somewhat raised, and the forehead swollen; the horns of the male (the female being without) are large, long, and triangular, bending backward like a half circle, attenuated from the base to the tip, which is obtuse; the body is large and muscular, the tail short, and bare on the inside; the legs are pretty long, and the hoofs short.
They wander in flocks of about a hundred, led by some old and courageous male. Their habits are like those of our own sheep, docile and gentle, though sometimes an amorous or a churlish old ram will butt down a child, a woman, or a man, who may happen to stand in his road, when the fit is upon him.