4o6 SPORT IN EUROPE 



came across. This species of sheep, though smaller, appears to be 



intermediate between the Pamir Ovis poll and the Altai Ovis amnion, 



to which I will now draw the reader's attention. The " true Ovis 



amnion " (as Rowland Ward calls it) is distributed over 



Northern Mongrolia, in the Altai Mountains, on the 

 Ammon. ^ 



extreme southern borders of Siberia, its western limit 

 being probably the Mouss-Taou range ; eastwards and southwards its 

 limit is yet undefined, but there is every reason to believe that this 

 largest of all wild sheep is to be found along the hills running to Lake 

 Baikal, south of Irkoutsk, in the eastern direction. In 

 1897 Littledale and I found them as far south as Dain 

 Kul, where the natives asserted that in the mountains south of that 

 lake there were also sheep belonging to the same type. Our expe- 

 riences showed them to be very sporadically distributed. We came 

 across numbers of them on the Siberian frontier, losing them entirely 

 for some time along the Kobdo River, and finding them again further 

 westward in herds of sixty rams. The height at the withers does not 

 apparently exceed that of Ovis poli, but the horns are more massive 

 (the maximum girth at the base being twenty inches), and denote a 

 more robust growth. We found them in June on rolling hills at an 

 altitude of about 9,000 feet. They take to the rocks only when they 

 are scared, and usually live in the open. The native Kalmuk name 

 is kotchkor for rams, corresponding to the Pamir guldja. The ewes 

 are in almost all parts of Central Asia known as arkhar. Little- 

 dale's largest head of this species measured 62^ inches in length, and 

 19I inches girth. 



In concluding these brief remarks on mountain game in the 



