84 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
tific collectors, Professor Lewis Lindsay Dyche and Mr. Andrew 
J. Stone, will be quoted in full in these notes. 
For fifteen years the strangely discolored type specimens of 
Ovis dalli have conveyed to zoologists a totally erroneous im- 
pression of the true color of this beautiful animal; and for nearly 
that length of time they have remained unique in their peculiar 
appearance. At last, two other singed-looking specimens have 
been noted. On his journey down the Yukon, in 1896, Mr. War- 
burton Pike saw some Mountain Sheep skins at the mouth of 
Forty-Mile Creek (forty miles below Dawson City), which he 
describes as being ‘‘ very white, with the tips of the hair looking 
as if they had been singed by fire.” 
I have examined perhaps forty skins and heads of this animal, 
and, excepting the type specimens, have never seen even one that 
was otherwise than clear milk-white, save a few which had be- 
come stained or dirty through contact with earth or dust. There 
is now before me a mounted head, taken in summer, the hair on 
which is only an inch in length, but it is perfectly white and 
immaculate. To show the very striking effect of this animal as 
seen alive in its own haunts, Messrs. W. R. McFadden & Son, 
of Denver, very kindly took the trouble to transport three speci- 
mens, owned and recently mounted by them, to a rocky situation 
near Denver, and there had them photographed for reproduction 
in these notes. 
The hair on all these specimens is pure white, and there is no 
trace of any coloring matter at the ends of the hair. 
Let anyone who doubts the purity of color of Ovis dalli ex- 
amine two surpassingly fine unmounted skins in the collection 
of the United States Biological Survey, at Washington, Dr. C. 
Hart Merriam, Chief, which were collected on the Porcupine 
River, Alaska, eighty miles northwest of Rampart House, on Jan- 
uary 25, 1894, by General Frederick Funston. For luxuriance of 
pelage I have never seen their equals. The hair of the male 
measures as follows: 
Inches. Cent. 
engeth on-top-of heck...) cee meets += 6 15.3 
Rength on ‘shoulders 2.2.26 sJ-aeeee eee iat 5 12.8 
Benethsonuside. <1) ...0. sch ince eae se 3 7.7 
Bengthvon thighs..= 5 <4: .-.0s5e eae eee ies te 3% 9 
The long hair on the top of the neck is finely pointed, not 
crimped throughout its terminal half, and is so luxuriant that it 
