246 ANIMAL LIFE IN THE YOSEMITE 



The mountain sheep is a large animal, with a body somewhat like that 

 of a deer, but with horns resembling in general structure those of a domestic 

 sheep. The name 'Bighorn' has reference to the size of the horns in the 

 male. Both sexes in the mountain sheep bear horns, although those of the 

 ewes (females) are much smaller, flatter, and less curved than those of 

 the males; they are goat-like. A full-grown sheep of the Sierra race 

 (as shown by specimens from Mount Baxter, farther to the south) stands 

 about 3 feet high at the shoulder and weighs in the neighborhood of 200 

 pounds. The body is densely covered with long crinkly hairs at the bases 

 of which there is a minute 'wool' (underfur). The color of the pelage 

 is pale sandy brown, with a large whitish patch on the rump. 



The wild sheep of the Sierra Nevada under original conditions occupied 

 for the most part the highest and wildest parts of the mountains, the 

 Alpine-Arctic Zone and adjacent parts of the Hudsonian Zone. In these 

 high places they subsisted on the native bunch grasses and other small 

 plants to be found there. In the winter time the animals sometimes moved 

 down the east slope of the Sierras to where the snow mantle was not so 

 deep, but there was no general exodus as in the case of the Mule Deer. 

 The Sierra Nevada Mountain Sheep was a hardy animal, fitted to live in 

 the narrow belt of alpine conditions found along the crest of the Sierras, 

 and would be there in numbers today had it received any reasonable 

 consideration from the white man. Its gradual return, from the southern 

 remnant, is a thing to be hoped for. 



