1884.] 



THE WILD SHEEP OF CYPRUS. 



.595 



Mouflon-stalking in Troodos may long continue to be one of the sports 

 of Cyprus. 



The earliest precise scientific mention of the Cyprus Mouflnn as 

 distinguished from the Corsican species is to be found in the ' Dar- 

 stellung und Beschreibung der Thiere,' published in Berlin in 1829, 

 by Messrs. Brandt and Ratzeburg, who class it with the Wild Sheep 

 of Persia and Armenia under the name of O. mnsimon var. orientalis, 

 to distinguish it from the Wild Sheep of Corsica and Sardinia, which 

 they call 0. musimon var. occidental is. This work also contains a 

 figure of a specimen from Cyprus, which was, and probably still is, in 

 the Berlin Museum. 



In 1840 the late Mr. E. Blyth read a paper on the Wild Sheep of 

 the World before this Society, and gave the name of O. ophion to 

 the Wild Sheep of Cyprus, and 0. gmelini to the Wild Sheep of 

 Armenia and Southern Persia. Mr. Blyth appears to have been 

 struck by the close resemblance apparently existing between the 

 Cyprus and Armenian species. In June 1875, in a paper on the 

 Wild Sheep of Asia read before this Society by Sir Victor Brooke, it 

 was suggested that the Cyprus Wild Sheep is nothing but an insular 

 derivative of O. gmelini. In a paper on the Mammals of Asia Minor 

 by Messrs. Alston and Darnford, read before this Society on February 

 3rd. 1880, attention was drawn to a specimen of O. gmelini, now in 

 the British Museum, brought from the Cilician Taurus, which was 

 shown to deviate from the accepted type of O. gmelini and to 

 approximate to O. ophion. Nothing can be proved from compa- 

 rison of the measurements of the horns of the two specimens of 

 O. ophion now exhibited, one belonging to Lord Lilford, and of the 

 head of O. gmelini mentioned in Messrs. Alston and Dauford's 

 paper. 



Measurements. 



A. Stuffed specimen of O. option for British Museum. 



B. Head of O. ophion, in collection of Colonel Biddulph. 



O. Stuffed head of O. ophion in the collection of Lord Lilford. 



D. Specimen of O. gmelini from Cilician Taurus, in British Museum. 



The figure (P. Z. S. 1880, pp. 56, 57, figs. 3 and 6) shows that the 

 general flexure of the horns is very similar to that of the Cyprus 

 species. There appears, however, to be a considerable difference in the 

 character of the horn. In O. gmelini the three edges of the horn are 



