The Wild Goats and Sheep of Dardistan 85 



only seen it adopted by the young, and presumably 

 the frivolous of a herd. 



The horns of this wild goat are set on at all 

 sorts of angles, those forming an open V when 

 seen from the front being the handsomest. The 

 biggest Dardistan horns often curve in an out- 

 ward spiral like the gigantic heads lately brought 

 from the Thian Shan range. Some, on the other 

 hand, have tips that converge, and I have my- 

 self shot one with horns of 43 inches, the tips 

 of which were only 3J inches apart. The tips 

 of the horns of a very big ^Egragus that I shot 

 in Persia actually crossed, and the ' Encyclopedia 

 of Sport' mentions one of the breed under notice 

 with the same ugly peculiarity. As to colour, 

 both in the north of Gilgit and Chitral one comes 

 across what seems almost like a distinct variety 

 of ibex with very massive pale -coloured horns. 

 Shikaris say that these are visitors from Badak- 

 shan and Wakhan, but I do not myself think 

 there are any grounds for believing that the 

 northern and southern slopes of the same range 

 are inhabited by different varieties of ibex. At 

 the same time, the difference between these pale 

 massive horns and the more usual dark thin ones 

 is very curious. The very thin horns one some- 

 times comes across are, according to shikaris, 

 found on ibex born two at a time. As with 



