Alpine Ibex 163 



ot Buffon's NatuFiil History, published in 1821, these knobs were regarded 

 as marking the annual limits of growth of the horns. If this were so, 

 large ibex horns would indicate a prodigious age for the animals to which 

 they pertain ; but, as a matter of lact, the annual lines of growth are indi- 

 cated by grooves on the sides of the horns, and the space between any two 

 ot these includes several knobs. Originally inhabiting all the higher Alps 

 oi the Tyrol, Savoy, and Switzerland, the ibex, after the wild ox and the 

 bison, seems to have been one of the first of the wild ruminants of con- 

 tinental Europe whose range and numbers were seriously affected by 

 human persecution. And, always excepting the wild ox, it is actually the 

 first which has become practically exterminated as a wild animal. For 

 ibex-shooting, save to a few tortunate individuals who receive special royal 

 permission, has become a sport of the past ; this handsome and interesting 

 animal being now represented only by a few small herds v/hich, under the 

 protection of Government, survive in certain carefully -guarded Alpine 

 valleys on the Italian side of Monte Rosa. As might be expected, the 

 members of these herds appear to be of much smaller bodily dimensions 

 than their ancestors who roamed at will over the Alps ; and, judging 

 from specimens which occasionally reach England, it would seem highly 

 probable that some at least of these protected herds have a strain of the 

 blood of the domesticated goat in their veins. At this distance of time it 

 is probably impossible to record in detail the history of the extermination 

 of the steinbock from the greater portion of its former habitat. But as 

 early as the sixteenth century the numbers of this animal had been so 

 reduced that it was even then regarded as rare and local in most parts ot 

 Switzerland. The year i 540 is stated to have witnessed its final disappear- 

 ance from the valley of Martinswand, while it only survived another 

 decade in Glarus, and by 1574 had become extremely scarce in Grau- 

 biinden. In Bergell and the Upper Engadine the species survived till a 

 somewhat later date, laws for its protection being propounded in 161 2 and 



