RAM FIGHTS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2596, 2 March 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

RAM FIGHTS.

It may perhaps throw some light on the objcuro carinas of the stupidity of sheep to see tliem fight. To watch two rams engage in a duel, which thoy do iu a most gentlemanly mariner, as if it were as much a matter of etiquette as an engagement with swords in the environs of I'aris, is better thau most farces now-a-days. Perhaps there are some ten or twenty rams iu a yard or corral, and presently two put their hoads together. Probably they are having ;i conversation, and in it some debatable matter crops up, for one shakos his head impatiently as if doubting the word of his interlocutor. The insulted ram looks up, advances a step or two, and they rattle their horns together. IuHtantly all tha other gentlemeu gather as the two intendiusr combatants inarch backwards stop by step with an admirable slowness and deliberation. They are the two knights at the ends of the lists. There is an instant's pause, and then they hurl themselves violently forward to meet forehead to forehead with a shock that ought to break their skulls. Then the solemn backward inarch commences, the pause is made, and the two belligerents leap at each other once more, and the terrible thud is heard again. Sometimes they run ten courses before one turns diz/.y and declines the battle, but oftener five or six blows makes the thinnerskulled turn away, to be contemptuously hustled in the rear by the conqueror. Occasionally the sight of one set. of duellists inspirors the unoccupied lookerson with a noble ardour, and couple after couple join in to march backwards side by side, and rush forward in line to meet the opposing forces. It seems to me that there is more interest iu this than the mere farce of the display. However such a habit arose, it can hardly now he advantageous to the species, and must tend to lower them in the scale of intellect; for while the thickest-skulled remain lords, those with the most room for brains of tail get their craniums cracked with fatal results. This may help to explain the very uncommon idiocy of domesticated sheep, just as the duello among the Australian black fellows may throw light on the dull thickheadedness of soma of the native humans of that country. For their favourite method of duelling ; at least it was that of which 1 heard most—is to take two clubs, and having drawn lots in some iniimier for tho first blow, to strike the loser on the head, as he bends down, with the utmost force possible. If that blow is not docisivo—and it is not always soil U the turn of tho other man to dD his best, and so on until a skull is cracked or its owner rendered insensible. It would be hard to find a nearer parallel to tho duel of the rams.—Cornhill.