ROCKY- MOUNTAIN SHEEP. 11 



We would incite the attention of our citizens to this 

 important discovery; for although the Spanish missiona- 

 aries, in 1697, made mention of this sheep^and it is again 

 noticed in Venegas' History of California*, yet these ac- 

 counts were discredited. It is to captain Lewis to whom 

 belongs the honour of having been the first to assure his 

 countrymen, by the exhibition of a genuine specimen, 

 that the animal does exist. How subservient to the wants 

 and pleasures of mankind it may be rendered by domes- 

 tication, we cannot at present declare; but there is room 

 for conjecture, that the introduction of this new species 

 of a race of quadrupeds immemorially ranked among the 

 most valuable of the gifts of the Creator, will confer a 

 lasting benefit upon the agricultural and manufacturing 

 interests of the community. 



Sincj writing the foregoing, I have seen the three 

 first volumes of the Noiiveau Dictionnaire d^Histoire Na- 

 tiirelle^ which work is now publishing in Paris; and in 

 the article Antelope I find a description of an American 

 quadruped, 'which is in the collection of the Linnean 

 society of London. This description appears to have been 

 extracted from a memoire, read before the Philomatique 

 Society of Paris, by M. de Blainville, wherein the author 

 propose a new arrangement of the ruminants with hollow 

 and persistent horns, and a subdivision of the Genus Anti^ 

 lope\ and classes the above animal under the name oi Rii- 

 picapra Americana^ (Bulletin de la Societe' Philomatique, 

 1816, p. 80.) As I have not the satisfaction of seemgthe 

 Bulletin, I must be content with theijiformation conveyed 

 in the article in the Noiiveau Dictionnaire, The specimen 

 is said to be of the bigness of a middling sized goat; the 



* Vol. i. p. S5. English lra!.slaliOii, London, 1759. 



