250 WILD LIFE IN CHINA. 



from the few notes I liave,so that it is not necessary to do more 

 than mention it here. Above 14,000 feet, in the regions of 

 the great limestone precipices, above the limit of tree growth, 

 out on the wind-swept grass-covered mountain tops, lived the 

 precipice sheep: and few animals are better game, or more 

 difficult to shoot than these sheep of the Tibet border country. 

 From the foot of a precipice perhaps 500 feet high we looked 

 up to the summit one day, and saw one of these sheep peering 

 over the summit of the ridge; his magnificent curved" horns 

 were plainlj' silhouetted against the sky-line. Again on a 

 steeply sloping grassland scree (now of course under a foot 

 or more of snow) we came across a bunch of them, 

 but on seeing us several hundred \'ards distant, thej' 

 bolted up the slope to the jagged crest of the ridge 

 and were soon dispersed and lost amongst the crags. 

 Three days we spent hunting these sheep, floundering knee- 

 deep through the snow drifts up on the summits of these 

 mountains, toiling up the long valleys, wading half-frozen 

 streams, plunging through forests of fir and bush, ranging 

 in altitude from the valley where we were quartered at about 

 10,000 feet to beyond the tree belt at about 15,000 feet. And 

 this was in April, so that the summer must be brief in these 

 mountains. It is naturally difficult to say for certain what 

 this sheep is, since we did not obtain a specimen, but it is 

 quite possibly the Tibetan argali (Ovis Hodgsoiii) which 

 inhabits the Tibetan plateau from the northern Ladak to the 

 districts northwards of Sikkim, and so, we may suppose, 

 eastwards through the northern parts of outer Tibet to the 

 geographical borders of western China. It prefers mountains 

 which expose an abundance of naked rock (such as limestone 

 mountains always do) but have their slopes more or less 

 forested: in summer, at least, it does not descend below 

 15,000 feeet, but the Tibetan hunters informed us that in the 

 winter they had been shot in close proximity to the village, 

 as low down as 12,000 feet. Nevertheless, with all their 

 skill, and with the advantage of spending days together up 

 in the mountains, the hunters do not shoot a great number 

 of these wary rock scramblers. The argali is one of the 

 largest sheep known, being comparable in size to a donkey. 



A very closelj^-allied species — perhaps a mere variety, 

 inhabits Mongolia and parts of southern Siberia, so that 

 if the species described above is not the true O. Hodgson i 

 of Tibet, it is lil<ely to be an intermediate species, 

 linking O. Hodgsoiii of Anterior Tibet to O. Ammoii 

 of .Mongolia; on the other hand, it may be observed 

 that for geographical considerations alone there is no 

 reason why the one species should not have a continuous 

 distribution from the ' northern slopes of the Himalayas 



