MOUNTAIN SHEEP NOTES 159 



rival rams will choose a level spot, back off ten or fifteen 

 feet from each other, and come together with a force 

 like two heavy sledgehammers wielded by blacksmiths. 

 The force of the impact sometimes throws both combat- 

 ants upright on their hind legs, just as colliding locomo- 

 tives often rear up as they crash together. It is then that 

 the strain upon the neck of the animal is very great; and 

 the wrench and shock are greatest at the point where the 

 neck joins the skull. Small wonder, then, that Nature, 

 in her infinite wisdom and patience, has reinforced the 

 danger-point with a rubber-like ligament of such enor- 

 mous strength that the neck cannot be broken by any 

 blow from in front. 



Captain C. E. Radcliffe, of the Life Guards, author 

 of " Big-Game Shooting in Alaska," claims that moun- 

 tain sheep do not break or broom the tips of their horns 

 in fighting, as many sportsmen and naturalists have 

 hastily concluded that they do. I entirely agree with 

 him. When Mr. Phillips and I placed together the un- 

 skinned heads of those two big rams, with their massive 

 horns base to base, just as we know that sheep horns strike 

 in fighting, we saw that the tips of the two pairs were far 

 distant from each other, and well out of harm's way. As 

 sheep strike each other in fighting, head to head, it is a 

 physical impossibility for the tips to be harmed. And 

 even if a horn should be struck, it would need to be held 

 tightly in a vise in order for its tip to receive a blow of 

 sufficient force to break it off, or even to " broom " it. 



Take it at any point you please, the horn of a living 

 mountain sheep ram eight or nine years old is a very hard 



