In The Spring-Time They Slit Open Their Bellies And Take Out
Some Tens Of Catties Of Fat, After Which They Sew Them Up Again, And The
Sheep Live On; If The Fat Were Not Removed, (The Animal) Would Swell Up
And Die." (CHAU JU-KWA, Pp.
142-3.)
"The Chinese of the T'ang period had heard also of the trucks put under
these sheep's tails. 'The Ta-shi have a foreign breed of sheep (hu-yang)
whose tails, covered with fine wool, weigh from ten to twenty catties; the
people have to put carts under them to hold them up. Fan-kuo-chi as quoted
in Tung-si-yang-k'au." (HIRTH and ROCKHILL, p. 143.)
Leo Africanus, Historie of Africa, III., 945 (Hakluyt Soc. ed.), says he
saw in Egypt a ram with a tail weighing eighty pounds!:
OF THE AFRICAN RAMME.
"There is no difference betweene these rammes of Africa and others, saue
onely in their tailes, which are of a great thicknes, being by so much the
grosser, but how much they are more fatte, so that some of their tailes
waigh tenne, and other twentie pounds a peece, and they become fatte of
their owne naturall inclination: but in Egypt there are diuers that feede
them fatte with bran and barly, vntill their tailes growe so bigge that
they cannot remooue themselves from place to place: insomuch that those
which take charge of them are faine to binde little carts vnder their
tailes, to the end they may haue strength to walke. I my selfe saw at a
citie in Egypt called Asiot, and standing vpon Nilus, about an hundred and
fiftie miles from Cairo, one of the saide rams tailes that weighed
fowerscore pounds, and others affirmed that they had seene one of those
tailes of an hundred and fiftie pounds weight. All the fatte therefore of
this beast consisteth in his taile; neither is there any of them to be
founde but onely in Tunis and in Egypt." (LEO AFRICANUS, edited by Dr.
Robert BROWN, III., 1896, Hakluyt Society, p. 945.)
XVIII., pp. 97, 100 n.
Dr. B. Laufer draws my attention to what is probably the oldest mention of
this sheep from Arabia, in Herodotus, Book III., Chap. 113:
"Concerning the spices of Arabia let no more be said. The whole country is
scented with them, and exhales an odour marvellously sweet. There are also
in Arabia two kinds of sheep worthy of admiration, the like of which is
nowhere else to be seen; the one kind has long tails, not less than three
cubits in length, which, if they were allowed to trail on the ground,
would be bruised and fall into sores. As it is, all the shepherds know
enough of carpentering to make little trucks for their sheep's tails. The
trucks are placed under the tails, each sheep having one to himself, and
the tails are then tied down upon them. The other kind has a broad tail,
which is a cubit across sometimes."
Canon G. Rawlinson, in his edition of Herodotus, has the following note on
this subject (II., p. 500): -
"Sheep of this character have acquired among our writers the name of Cape
Sheep, from the fact that they are the species chiefly affected by our
settlers at the Cape of Good Hope.
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