76 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



one mound at a sheep on the top of another, and unless you 

 are using a rifle with a very flat trajectory, and have (as all 

 men should in Central Asia) a rough mental table, to suit your 

 own eyesight, of the distances at which an eye or an ear would 

 be visible, you are extremely likely to throw a great many 

 shots away. 



Altogether, we were somewhat unlucky in this expedition. 

 The sheep's habit of disappearing in cavities and under 

 rocks from lo a.m. until evening made the sport less interest- 

 ing than the pursuit of Ovis poli^ who is always 'on view,' and 

 even when hard hit the extraordinary vitality of the beast 

 not infrequently enables him to escape the hunter. However, 

 in the second range which we tried I had fair success, bag- 

 ging six or seven heads varying from thirty-six to forty inches. 

 The ground here was a range some three thousand feet above 

 the level of the plains, whose top was reached by occasional 

 valleys up which it was possible to ride, while the northern 

 face of the range was steep and rocky, a favourite haunt of 

 Capra sibirica. 



My biggest ram was killed in ground even lower than this, 

 among the sandstone hollows of the third range which we 

 tried, at an elevation of not more than two hundred feet 

 above the plain. This was a nice head of fifty inches. 



Before closing these notes upon the sheep of Asia, may 

 I respectfully invite the scientific naturalist to come to the 

 assistance of the unlearned sheep-shooter ? — to whom the in- 

 convenient question is often put, ' Are your trophies Ovis 

 poli, karelini, or argali ? ' for to this he is constrained in his 

 ignorance to reply ' I'll be shot if I know ! ' 



Would it not be well to place on record a revised classifi- 

 cation of the sheep of Asia, before erroneously-applied names 

 attach too firmly by common usage ? 



In no contentious or captious spirit I would plead for a 

 new and distinct classification, in .which the sheep of Asia, the 

 tur of the Caucasus, and the ibex of the different parts of the 

 world may be clearly distinguished the one from the other. 



