OVIS.—BISON. 111 
1. Ovis cervina. 
Ovis montana, Cuvier, Régne An. i. p. 267 (1817, ex Geoffroy, nec Ord)'*; Baird, Mamm. N. Am. 
p- 673°; Rep. U.S. Mex. Bound. Surv. ii., Mamm. p. 52°. 
Ovis cervina, Desmarest, Nouv. Dict. d’Hist. Nat. xxi. p. 553 (1818, ex Geoffroy) ‘. 
Borrego cimaron of Mexicans’. 
Tenatzali, Tajé of Indians *. 
Hab. Nortu America, Rocky Mountains from Upper Missouri and Yellowstone south- 
wards ?.—MeExico, Sonora (Schott ®). 
The range of the “Big-horn,” or Mountain Sheep of North America, extends into 
Sonora, where the species was found not unplentifully by the naturalists of the United- 
States Boundary Survey. Mr. A. Schott remarks that the differences of the state of 
drainage in that region appear to determine the distribution of the various Ruminants. 
“Thus the Common Deer belongs to the more shady lowlands, the Mule Deer to the 
uplands, the Antelope ranges over the open mountain table-lands; whilst the Mountain 
Sheep has its home on the rugged crests of the waterless sierras of North-western 
Sonora and New Mexico.” 
Mr. Schott also notices that the curious story as to the Big-horn’s power of leaping 
over precipices, and saving itself by alighting on its massive horns, is firmly believed by 
the native hunters. “It is also not a modern invention, for Clavigero mentions the 
same as he heard it from the lips of the Californian Indians” ®. 
[BISON.] 
In his admirable and exhaustive memoir on ‘The American Bisons, Living and Ex- 
tinct’}, Mr. J. A. Allen gives satisfactory evidence of the former extension of the range 
of the so-called Buffalo, Bison americanus (Gmelin), to the south of the Rio Grande. 
It is true that the notices of Hernandez and other medieval writers may refer to the old 
province of Quivira, which lay far to the north of the present boundary of Mexico; but 
the evidence collected by the late Dr. Berlandier, and contained in his manuscripts now 
in the Smithsonian Institution, leaves no doubt that the annual southward migration of 
the Bison formerly extended far south of the present United-States frontier. There is 
sufficient proof of its former range, says Mr. Allen, “ over the north-eastern provinces of 
* It is with great regret that I feel obliged to change the well-known name of the American Wild-Sheep, 
but no choice is left to any one who accepts the fundamental law of priority. Ovis montana of Ord (Guthrie’s 
Geogr. (2nd Am. ed.) pp. 292, 309 [1815, deser. orig. fide Baird]; Journ. Ac. Philad. i. [1817] p. 8) is indis- 
putably the Rocky-Mountain Goat, which now properly stands as Aplocerus montana (Ord). It is evident, 
therefore, that the name Ovts montana cannot be applied to any other animal. 
+ Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard Coll. iy. no. 10, pp. 1-246, pls. i.—xii. (1876); also simultaneously issued 
as Mem. Geol. Surv. Kentucky, i. pt. 2; and reprinted in Rep. U.S. Geol. and Geogr. Surv. of Territories for 
1875, pp. 443-587. 
