9() NEW VORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
the pelage of the skins on which Ovrs dalli was based, their color 
certainly was peculiar to them. 
A very convincing explanation of the condition of some skins 
of White Mountain Sheep, which might be described as * dirty 
white,”’ is found in the following interesting statement furnished 
me on this point by Professor Lewis Lindsay Dycne, of the Uni- 
versity of Kansas, based on extensive personal observations in the 
Alaskan Mountains: 
“The White Mountain Sheep are a ‘ dingy or dirty-white’ during the 
summer season only. This is particularly true during the months of July 
and August. By the first of July the animals have shed their long, thick 
coats of winter hair. At this time they are almost naked, so to speak, the 
hair being not more than from 4% to ™% inch in length. The animals fre- 
quent the sunny sides of the mountain ranges, and make their beds in 
masses of shale rock, or on slopes where there is more or less dirt. They 
frequently paw the rocks and earth away so as to make a form large 
enough to sleep in. These places become more or less covered with drop- 
pings. Light snows and rains come, the earth is damp, and the animals 
get their hair stained until they become a ‘ dingy or dirty-white.’ By the 
first of September the snows are falling, and the animals have a fair coat 
of hair. They make their beds in the snow, and gradually become white. 
I saw skins that were white. The ones I got early in September were 
nearly white, but not beautiful and snow-white like those taken late in the 
fall and early winter. Pure white skins in the hands of the Indians soon 
become soiled, and dingy with smoke.” 
In the course of his very extensive Arctic and sub-Arctic ex- 
plorations, Mr. Andrew J. Stone has enjoyed exceptional ad- 
vantages for observing the White Sheep in its haunts. The fol- 
lowing statement from him regarding the color of this animal 
is therefore of decided interest and value: 
“T have taken specimens of Ovis dalli in the Nahanna Mountains, a 
spur of the Rockies about 60° north, and in the main range of the Rockies 
at 66° 30’ north. I have seen specimens at the mouth of Arctic Red River, 
and at Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, from near the head-waters of 
these streams. I have also seen numerous specimens from the Rockies 
where they form the divide between the lower Peel and the Mackenzie delta 
on the east and* the waters of the Porcupine on the west, and also from 
the Rockies that extend farther west along the Arctic coast. 
“In the fall and winter of 1900 I saw a considerable number of speci- 
mens on the Kenai Peninsula. 
“The only colored hairs I ever observed on any of the specimens of 
dalli I have seen were on a specimen I took in the Nahanna Mountains. 
On the end of the tail were about a dozen brown hairs. The appearance 
of the pelage of specimens from different sections, taken at the same time 
