212 Sheep 



districts of- western North America from the desert regions of the Colorado 

 river and Arizona northwards into British Columbia, where the present 

 race not improbably intergrades with the next. Examples from the Yellow- 

 stone river, like the mounted ram in the British Museum, have somewhat 

 less massive horns than those trom ^^"voming and Colorado, but in other 

 respects appear to be indistinguishable. 



Habits. — It is the custom ot American sportsmen to speak of the Rocky 

 Mountain bighorn as inhabiting the most inaccessible precipitous cliffs, 

 thus giving the idea that in its mode of life it is more like a goat than 

 the wild sheep of the Old World. According, however, to Mr. Phillips- 

 Wollev, in his account of this animal publislied in the BaJ/nlnton Library., 

 this is quite a mistaken notion. Bighorn, he observes, are luidoubtedly 

 sometimes found in difficult and even dangerous places, but to describe 

 sheep-shooting as anything like chamois or ibex-hunting is a mistake. In 

 this respect, therefore, the bighorn does not depart so widelv h'om the 

 habits ot other wild sheep as might easilv be imagined to be the case from 

 the accounts given by manv writers. 



For the following notes I am indebted to Mr. E. S. Cameron : — Big- 

 horn are found in the "bad-lands" of the Yellowstone, Missouri, and 

 Powder valleys, and are met with in flocks of from five to fifty individuals ; 

 they are very gregarious, and in my experience under no circumstances 

 ever remain alone for long. The flocks, when undisturbed, seek the prairie 

 to feed at daylight, returning to the bad-lands at nine or ten o'clock to rest 

 until the afternoon, when they will again rise to feed among the bad-lands, 

 often returning to the prairie in the evening, and grazing until dark. So 

 far as I am aware, they never feed at night like the mule-deer. Their food 

 consists of grass and three varieties of sage-plant, known locally as sweet 

 sage, sour sage, and salt sage, but I have never known them to eat any wild 

 fruits or berries such as are sought by the deer. Like these, they obtain their 

 food in winter by scraping away the snow, and in summer they graze like 



