MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS 437 



tive evidence to justify the assumption that the wild 

 Mongol Argali (pronounced '" arkal " by the natives) 

 O. ammon (or 0. musimon of Pallas), 3 with its very 

 short tail and dark greyish ruddy-brown winter coat, con- 

 sisting of very fine wool " mixed with hair, everywhere 

 ij in. long at least, concealing at its roots a fine woolly 

 down of white colour," is at least the ancestor of the 

 most numerously represented and widely distributed 

 section, the fat-rumped, 0. steatopyga, which is reported 

 to be wilder than its compeer broad-tail. 4 This assump- 

 tion is supported by the observations of Douglas Car- 

 ruthers, who in 1912 discovered at two places in Western 

 Turkestan, viz., Adishan (72 E. long.) and Hissar 

 (68 E. long.), that wild rams, believed to be 0. poll, 

 although not of the gigantic variety, had been captured 

 and were kept in confinement to mate with domestic 

 sheep to strengthen their constitutions, often a very neces- 

 sary counteraction to the indiscriminate commingling 

 and in-and-in breeding which goes on in an unfenced 

 country, especially where sheep are herded in small 

 flocks. Authorities, however, are not at one on the 

 point, for Lydekker says : 5 "It is more probable that the 

 Urial, 0. vignei, was the ultimate ancestor of the fat- 

 tail and the fat-rumped groups, both of which were almost 

 certainly differentiated from a common domesticated 

 stock." 



Some of the characteristics by which the flocks " of all 



3 Identical with the O. 'poll, Blyth, a sheep furnished with 

 gigantic horns found by Marco Polo in its greatest perfection on 

 the Pamirs of the mountain midrib of Asia, viz., lofty valleys 

 between ranges of hills, and with floors more or less flat, but 

 nowhere more than five or six miles wide and often much less, 

 " covered with pasture so luxuriant and nutritious that if horses 

 are left on it for more than forty days they die of repletion." 

 " Marco Polo," p. 178. (Translation by Sir Henry Yule. Third 

 edition, revised by Henri Cordier.) 



4 With this view Dr. C. C. Young disagrees, arguing that 

 " the Argali being a mountain sheep has no need for any fat 

 pillows, nor has any other mountain sheep. The Mamai is a 

 fat-rump, probably the original O. steato-pyga^ the wild desert 

 sheep." 



5 " The Sheep and its Cousins," IQI2, p. 193. 



