220 Sheep 



hairs being dull rusty, thus making the fur look as though it had been 

 slightly singed. In winter pure white. 



Distribution. — Typically trom the Upper Yukon \^illey, Alaska, near 

 where it crosses the British boundary, and extending as tar north as 

 about latitude 70 . The following passage occurs in Mr. Nelson's original 

 description : — " From Mr. iVI'Ouesten, and various other tur-traders along 

 the Yukon and elsewhere, I learned that the range ot this form covers 

 nearlv all the mainland of Alaska where there are mountains, excepting 

 the vicinity of the Bering Sea coast. It is limited strictly to the main- 

 land, and occurs only among the higher parts of the mountains south of 

 about 68 of latitude, but north ot this it is found on lower ground, and 

 as the mountains give place to low hills and rolling plains near the Arctic 

 coast, it descends nearly or quite to the sea-level. 



'•'■ Among the natives I have seen typical skins trom tlie mountains 

 south ot the I pper Kuskoquim rixer ; trom the headwaters of the 

 Tanana ; trom the Kadiak Peninsula near Bering Strait ; also from the 

 mountains east and north-east ot Kotzebue Sound, and, during the summer 

 of 1 88 1, while cruising between Kotzebue Sound and Point Barrow, we 

 saw hundreds of skins among the Eskimos, who iinariably pointed to 

 the low range of mountains a few miles back from the coast, when asked 

 where the sheep were found. 



" While hunting near Cape Thompson, on the .Xrctic coast, in the 

 middle of July 1881, I sav\' a pair of these animals within about five miles 

 ot the coast, at an elevation ot not oxer 300 feet above the sea. They 

 were feeding on an open grassy plain at the foot of a series of low hills, 

 over which they ran the moment they caught wind of me, as I tried to 

 approach along the bed of a small gully." 



In a later paper Mr. Nelson writes as follows concerning this sheep : — 

 "Two species ot mountain sheep, quite different from one another and 

 from the Rocky Mountain bighorn, are known in North-Western America. 



