EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT. 21 



To the south of these two sheep and in the Cassiar Mountains 

 of British Columbia, thus interposed between it and the true Rocky 

 Mountain big-horn, is the Stone sheep, O. stonei, which is very 

 dark in color, and the horns of which have a decidedly open spiral, 

 suggestive of the wide sweep of the horns of 0. poll. 



Small dark sheep, with horns of an open spiral, extend along 

 the Selkirks in British Columbia to the American border, while 

 the sheep of the main Rockies in the same latitude are clearly of 

 the type species and have an extremely close spiral. 



South of the Stone sheep, ranging from British Columbia into 

 Mexico, is the true Rocky Mountain big-horn, O. cervina, with 

 three subspecies; first, a salmon-colored race in southern Cali- 

 fornia, O. nelsoni; second, an outlying form in Old Mexico, 0. 

 mexicanus; and third, in the Bad Lands of the upper Missouri 

 River, O. auduboni. 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT. 



The only remaining member of the Bovidae to be considered 

 is the Rocky Mountain goat, Oreamnos, consisting of two species, 

 O. montanus, extending from the northern Rockies of the United 

 States into Alaska, where it is replaced near the western limit of 

 its range by an allied species, O. kennedyi, the horns of which are 

 lyrate and relatively wide spreading. The British Columbian 

 mountain goat is a much larger and finer animal than the typb 

 species in the United States, and has recently been assigned a 

 subspecific rank, as has the smaller form in the mountains of 

 Idaho. 



We would expect to find more species of this animal, as it is 

 a very aberrant form of the mountain antelopes or Rupicaprinae, 

 a subfamily of the Bovidae, of which the chamois is the best 

 known member. While not in any sense goats, the members of 

 this genus are to some extent intermediate between the true or 

 bovine antelopes and the goats. 



The genus most closely allied to Oreamnos is Nemorhaedus, 

 the members of which inhabit the central Asiatic plateau, where 

 they are known to sportsmen as the goral. An outlying form 

 in Japan, N. crispus, is well known as the serow. 



This strange and interesting inhabitant of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains is assigned to a peculiar genus, sharing its characters 

 with no Old World species, and, while its lineage cannot be traced 

 further back on this continent than the Upper Pleistocene, still 



