RUMINANTIA CAVICOKNIA OVIS MONTANA. 



675 



The tail is very short, with the hairs only two or three inches long, in the female. It is 

 covered with hair, rather depressed and somewhat pointed. 



The general color of this animal is a grayish brown, watered in some parts with darker, or 

 perhaps ashy plumbeous brown would express the tint more nearly. The skins before me do 

 not permit any very critical account of the variations in shade in different parts of the body, 

 except that the tints about the head are a little paler, and of a dirty white about the muzzle and 

 chin. According to Mr. Audubon there is a darker vertebral line along the back to the rump. 

 The entire neck, and a little beyond the fore legs is as described, with a darker plumbeous 

 tinge posteriorly, and a whitish patch between the rami of the lower jaw. The legs all round 

 are of the ground color, a narrow line on the posterior face only being white. The belly, 

 inguinal region, and on a patch on the rump, beginning some six inches anterior to the tail, 

 and extending backwards to the posterior outline of the buttocks, (which it intersects about as 

 far below the tail as it commences anteriorly to it,) are white. The tail itself is colored like the 

 back, connected with it by a narrow line of the same color. The hoofs are black ; the horns 

 yellowish brown, as in the common sheep. 



86J 



Fig. 26. Ovis Montana. Male. Upper Missouri. Left horn from the left side. 

 Fig. 27. The same from the front. 



Fig. 28. Base of the horn. Scale : 4 inches to the inch. 



Fig. 29. Ovis Montana. Female, No. 2593. Bridger's Pass. Left horn from the left side. Size, 

 3. 42 inches to the inch. 



