MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 6/ 



There are animals that refuse to be classified. The Swiss 



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nuthatch (Sitta europ&d) is, in habits and appearance, 

 half titmouse and half woodpecker ; the South African 

 proteles looks like a hybrid between a civet-cat and an 

 hyena ; and the Rocky Mountain sheep holds the exact 

 middle between a sheep and a deer. In the formation 

 of his neck, head, and horns he resembles the Sardinian 

 moufflon-wether, but his rump, stump tail, and legs are 

 those of the Virginia deer ; his color, too, is a brownish 

 dun, and his hair is straight and short, with the excep- 

 tion of a wreath of long bristles at the base of the neck. 

 The lambs are whity-brown, with the same dark streak 

 along the spine that is sometimes seen on fawns and 

 very young colts. A fox-squirrel the Sciurus cinereus 

 is called in the Southern Alleghanies : deer-sheep would 

 be the most appropriate English name for the carnero 

 cimarron. 



On a sudden stampede young lambs often get sep- 

 arated from their dams, and have sometimes been taken 

 alive. They can be brought up with the kids of a 

 milch-goat, and get tame enough to follow their foster- 

 mother to the valley, though they prefer the south side 

 of a hedge to the most comfortable stable. Domesti- 

 cated rams are apt to be troublesome, for an old cimarron 

 is as irascible as a fighting bull, and has a disagreeable 

 way of charging his adversary from behind, not rear- 

 ing and plunging like a billy-goat, but running full tilt and 

 with an unmistakable business-purpose. If permitted to 



