Mountain Sheep. 



of the nervous hurry so characteristic of the antelopes 

 and smaller deer ; the on-looker is really as much im- 

 pressed with the animal's sinewy power and self-command 

 as with his agility. His strength and his self-reliance 

 seem to fit him above all other kinds of game to battle 

 with the elements and with his brute foes ; he does 

 not care to have the rough ways of his life made smooth ; 

 were his choice free his abode would still be the vast 

 and lonely wilderness in which he is found. To him 

 the barren wastes of the Bad Lands offer a most at- 

 tractive home ; yet to other living creatures they are 

 at all times as grimly desolate and forbidding as any 

 spot on earth can be ; at all seasons they seem hostile to 

 every form of life. In the raging heat of summer the dry 

 earth cracks and crumbles, and the sultry, lifeless air 

 sways and trembles as if above a furnace. Through the 

 high, clear atmosphere, the intense sunlight casts un- 

 naturally deep shadows; and where there are no shadows, 

 brings out in glaring relief the weird, fantastic shapes 

 and bizarre coloring of the buttes. In winter snow and 

 ice coat the thin crests and sharp sides of the cliffs, and 

 increase their look of savage wildness ; the cold turns the 

 ground into ringing iron ; and the icy blasts sweep 

 through the clefts and over the ridges with an angry 

 fury even more terrible than is the intense, death-like, 

 silent heat of midsummer. But the mountain ram is alike 

 proudly indifferent to the hottest summer sun and to 

 the wildest winter storm. 



The lambs are brought forth late in May or early in 

 June. Like the antelope, the dam soon leads her kids to 



