50 



The National Collection 



and are also of distinctly lighter build. Formerly Grant Caribou were abun- 

 dant on the Alaska Peninsula, but so many have been butchered to make an 

 arctic holiday that few remain. Thanks to the Alaska game laws, the Sec- 

 retary of Agriculture has absolutely prohibited the killing of both Grant Cari- 

 bou and the Kenai species, on their respective peninsulas. The following- 

 table gives the dimensions of the six Caribou heads in this collection: 



CARIBOU HEADS 



White Mountain Sheep. On the Kenai Peninsula, in November and 

 December, 1900, Mr. Reed collected the ten sheep heads now in the collection. 

 The species which inhabit that locality has been described (by J. A. Allen) as 

 a sub-species of the original form, the type of which was collected by E. W. 

 Nelson, in 1884, in the Tanana country. 



The Kenai form has been christened Ovis dalli kenaiensis, and it is be- 

 lieved by some authorities that its horns "nearly always" are developed in a 

 closer spiral than the horns of White Sheep from the main range of the Rockies. 

 Be that as it may, we have here a splendid series of heads from the Kenai 

 country, and when some one else places us in possession of an equally good 

 series from other portions of the home of the White Sheep, we can have an 

 opportunity to judge for ourselves regarding the horn architecture of the two 

 forms. 



A great many of the White Sheep now in the halls of sportsmen, and in 

 museums generally, have been collected either in the summer or early autumn, 

 when the new pelage was short and scanty, and sometimes stained with earth. 

 Summer-killed specimens do not fully represent any ruminant species of the 

 temperate or arctic zones, but often in remote localities they are the only 

 ones obtainable by the long-distance sportsman. 



