MOUNTAIN SHEEP NOTES 251 



The culminating point of any important species, or 

 the locality in which it grows largest and carries the 

 largest horns, is a very interesting item of its life history. 

 For the past five years, or thereabouts, we have known 

 that throughout the wide range of the Big-Horn, — let us 

 say from the Grand Canyon of the Colorado to the Liard 

 River, a distance of two thousand miles, — the largest 

 horns come from southeastern British Columbia and 

 southwestern Alberta, within a radius of two hundred 

 miles of Banfif. I have had the pleasure of measuring, — 

 in the severest manner possible in taking such dimen- 

 sions, — several very fine heads owned by personal friends, 

 to which I can add the splendid head procured for me 

 in Banff by Mr. G. O. Shields. The circumference 

 measurements of these specimens were taken in as perfect 

 a plane as if each horn had been cut in two with a saw on 

 the line of the tape; and there is no better place in which 

 to place them before the Reader than here. 



A " record head " of a big-game animal is one which 

 by reason of its commanding proportions and superior 

 qualities is entitled to a place in every printed list of heads 

 or horns which undertakes to set forth the finest existing 

 specimens of that species. A record head is not neces- 

 sarily the largest head " on record." Usually, it is an 

 impossibility to find " the finest head in the world " of 

 any given species, because so many qualities enter in for 

 judgment that it is almost impossible for any one speci- 

 men to combine all of them. As a rule, the longest horns 

 lack massiveness, and the thickest horns lack in length. 

 Real grandeur is not often attainable by mere attenuation. 



