76 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 
ervation of so valuable a possession will accomplish more 
than anything else towards the attainment of the desired 
object. 
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP 
Of all our big-game animals none is more characteristic 
of our western mountains, and none offers such a magnifi- 
cent trophy to the sportsmen whose endurance its winning 
demands, as the mountain sheep, or ‘‘big-horn.”’ It. is the 
best-known type of the New World representatives of the 
numerous forms of wild sheep, all characterized by their 
circular horns, that are to be found in the Old World, where 
the finest of all the wild sheep, Ovis poli, occurs in the lofty 
Pamir ranges of Central Asia. 
Our several species of American mountain sheep are 
found from northern Mexico on the south to the mountains 
fringing the northern coast of Alaska and western side of 
the Mackenzie delta. They reach their greatest abundance 
in the central parts of their range. 
In the United States they have suffered the fate of the 
rest of the big game, and have been exterminated in very 
many of their former haunts through the greed of hunters 
and others whose rapacity has been permitted to run riot 
owing to the lack of adequate protection; and also by dis- 
ease contracted from domestic sheep. The history of this 
animal in the southern portion of its range serves as a 
solemn warning to us, and should be an incentive to the 
enforcement of every possible means that will secure the 
preservation of an animal which in its native haunts evokes 
thrills of admiration in every mountaineer. 
In Canada we have three distinct species of mountain 
sheep: the Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis) and its 
varieties; Stone’s or the black mountain sheep (Ovis stone), 
described by J. A. Allen in 1897; and the pure-white Dall’s 
mountain sheep (Ovis dallz), of the far north and Alaska, 
