Mountain Sheep 



pawing through the snow to reach the longest of the dry, brown 

 stems of bunchgrass that thrust their heads half way up through it. 

 On finding themselves objects of a hunter's special notice the two 

 rams quietly dropped over the sharp edge of the plateau, ploughed 

 down a narrow cleft filled with slide-rock and disappeared. Pur- 

 suit on their trail led down to the foot of a 2oo-foot wall of 

 rim-rock, and close along its base for a long distance. At last 

 the trail went farther down and dropped over the next lower 

 wall of rim-rock in a manner that seemed deliberately calculated 

 to make pursuit more laborious. As a change of tactics the 

 hunt was kept up along the top of the rim-rock, but the quarry 

 hugged the wall so closely that not even once was it sighted. 

 It became evident that only by hours of patient work could 

 those animals be encountered again, if at all." 



Like the caribou the bighorns from different sections of the 

 country present a very different appearance not only in colour, 

 but in the size and shape of their horns, and instead of the one 

 species which was known to our early explorers we have now 

 seven species or varieties, all, however, animals of essentially similar 

 habits. 



Varieties of Mountain Sheep 



1. Mountain Sheep. Ovis cervina Desmarest. Description and 



range as above. 



2. Audtibon's Sheep. Ovis cervina auduboni Merriam. Slightly 



different skull characters from the Rocky Mountain animal 

 to which it is very closely related. 



Range. " Bad Lands." Western South Dakota and Eastern 

 Wyoming. 



3. Nelson's Sheep. Ovis nelsoni Merriam. Similar, but much paler. 

 Range. Grapevine Mountains, between California and Nevada. 



4. Mexican Sheep. Ovis mexicanus Merriam. Intermediate in 



colour between the mountain and Nelson's sheep. Ears 

 much longer than those of the former. 

 Range. Northwestern Mexico and (?) southern New Mexico. 



5. Stone's Sheep. Ovis stonei Allen. Darker than the mountain 



sheep, with much more slender horns. 



Range. Headwaters of Pease River, Rocky Mountains, and 

 Cassiar Mountains to Stikeen Mountains, Alaska. 



6. Dall's Sheep. Ovis dalli Nelson. White or yellowish-white 



at all seasons. 

 Range. Alaskan Mountains, north of 60 to the Arctic coast. 



