The Mountain Sheep and its Range 



ance to the naturalist who shall write the life 

 history of this noble species. But unless that 

 naturalist has already been in the field and has 

 there gathered much material, he is likely to be 

 hard put to it when the time comes for his story 

 to be written, since then there may be no mountain 

 sheep to observe or to write of. The sheep is not 

 likely to be so happy in its biographer as was the 

 buffalo, for Dr. Allen's monograph on the Ameri- 

 can bison is a classic among North American 

 natural history works. 



The mountain sheep is an inhabitant of western 

 America, and the books tell us that it inhabits the 

 Rocky Mountains from southern California to 

 Alaska. This is sufficiently vague, and I shall en- 

 deavor a little further on to indicate a few 

 places where this species may still be found, 

 though even so I am unable to assign their ranges 

 to the various forms that have been described. 



For this species seems to have become differen- 

 tiated into several species and sub-species, some of 

 which are well marked, and all of which we do not 

 as yet know much about. These as described are 

 the common sheep of the Rocky Mountains (Ovis 

 canadensis) ; the white sheep of Alaska (Ovis 

 dalli] , and its near relative, 0. dalli kenaiensis; the 



so-called black sheep of northern British Columbia 



271 



