MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 65 



signal of distress, but an amatory acclaim, an invocation 

 of the dulcis Dea Amathnsia when the mercury trembles 

 at forty-five below zero. In stress of weather the cim- 

 arrons generally take refuge in a lee-side pine grove, 

 and are thus sometimes cut off from their pasture- 

 grounds, snow-bound, for a month or two, and have to 

 rough it on pine sprouts and such roots and herbs as 

 they can scrape up in the deep-frozen mould. 



A party of Mormons, being caught in a snow-storm 

 while crossing the Wahsatch Mountain in 1849, were 

 saved, according to Elder Millard's report, by coming 

 across a sheltered cove in the piny woods where a troop 

 of mountain sheep had trodden down the snow and 

 cropped the branches as high as they could reach, thus 

 forming a series of snug pine arbors, a ready-made 

 tabernacle for the necessitous saints. In this instinct of 

 finding shelter-places from the cold mammals are far 

 superior to birds, probably because they cannot emigrate 

 so easily. On the bitter-cold New-Year's morning of 

 1871 the game-keeper of the Duke of Gotha picked up 

 not less than thirty score of dead crows in his master's 

 rookery at Rheinhards-Brunn, but a band of fallow-deer 

 had saved themselves by breaking the lath door of a 

 cellar-like grotto and crowding into the innermost corner 

 of the vault. Besides, I believe that most wild beasts 

 have a little of that talent for hibernation which helps 

 squirrels and badgers over the worst hours of the long 

 Biornir-nott, the "bears' night," as the old Germans 



