80 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
Distribution.—The points of difference between Ovis fannint 
and all other species of American Ovid@e are conspicuous, and 
-it is remarkable that an animal so large and handsome, and so 
strangely marked that its separate identity must be recognizable 
at a considerable distance, should remain in North America un- 
discovered, and even unheard-of, until the closing year of the 
nineteenth century. It is strange, indeed, that for so many years 
it has escaped the vigilant eyes of the Hudson Bay Fur Company 
and its grand army of hunters and trappers. 
Concerning the precise range and abundance of this animal, 
Mr. Brown has written me, under date of December 20, 1900, 
as follows: 
“From the summits of the low mountains about Dawson, on the east 
side of the Yukon, can be distinctly seen, about fifty to seventy-five miles 
to the eastward, a beautiful, long, rugged, snow-capped mountain range, 
extending in a northerly and southerly direction away beyond the view, 
known as the Rocky Mountains. The two main branches of the Klondike 
River head in those snowy mountains, in a southeasterly direction from 
Dawson, and I understand it is there the mountain sheep are found by 
the hunters. As to how numerous they are I do not know, but presume 
they are quite plentiful, as I have seen several sled loads of the frozen 
carcass brought in by hunters to sell to the Dawson markets. 
“There are two species, one being all white, the other, such as the 
specimen you saw, is white with gray saddle-back. The white species, so 
far as I saw, are a little the smallest.” 
Mr. Warburton Pike, the Arctic explorer, informed me that 
on his journey down the Yukon, a short distance below Dawson, 
he heard of a “piebald’’ mountain sheep, but was unable to 
procure a specimen. It is highly probable that Owis fannimi will 
be found distributed throughout a considerable extent of the 
rugged mountain ranges which quite surround Dawson City 
north of the Yukon. 
Inquiries that have been made of Alaskan and Northwest Ter- 
ritory travellers and authorities have elicited several interesting 
statements bearing on the existence of Owls fannini. The most 
direct and positive is that of Mr. C. J. Jones, the well-known 
breeder of buffaloes, who in 1897-98 made a trip to the Barren 
Grounds after musk ox, and returned by way of the Porcupine- 
Yukon route. Ina letter dated January 26, 1901, he says: 
“There were two small bands [of Mountain Sheep] on the Big Black 
River. The members of one band were white, while the others were partly 
