ovis XAHUBA. 299 



deeper than broad at the base. They run backwards and outwards with a 

 bold circular sweep, and the flattened points again recurve outwards. The 

 forehead is flat and broad, the nose scarcely arched, and the muzzle fine. 

 The limbs are long and the tail very short. The vesture is close and thick, 

 consisting of more or less porrect piles concealing a scanty fleece. The 

 color is a brownish-gray, the sides mixed hoary and slaty gray-brown. 

 There is a well defined dirty white disk on the croup, and a more or less 

 marked dark mesial, tine. The throat, neck and breast are white, with 

 long hair, and the rest of the lower parts are dirty white. In summer 

 the pelage has a dull slaty tint, more or less tinged with rufous, and 

 hoary beneath. The female is paler, and wants the long hair of the neck. 



This splendid sheep is never perhaps seen in summer lower than 15,000 

 feet of elevation, and is often found much higher in the midst of the snows, 

 being often snowed up in winter for many days, and many perish yearly 

 from this cause. It lives in flocks, the males and females generally apart. 

 They run and leap like deer, it is said, but are not adapted for rocky 

 ground, and as climbers are inferior to the Biirrel. It is the shyest and 

 wildest of all animals, and is very hard to kill. To shoot the Ovis ammon 

 is the greatest ambition of the sportsman on the Himalayas. 



Cunningham states that the horns along with those of Ibex and the Sna 

 (0. vignei), are placed on the religious piles of stones met with in Ladak 

 and in other Buddhist countries. 



Another wild Asiatic sheep is Ovis Polii, ^\ji\ found on the elevated 

 plains of Pamir, east of Bokhara, 16,000 feet high. This magnificent 

 wild sheep has immense horns, less massive but more prolonged than 

 those of the rocky mountain sheep. The horns of one specimen were 4 

 feet 8 inches in length, round the curvature, and 14|- inches in circum- 

 ference at their base. It is the Bass or Boosh, of Pamir. 0. Omelini, 

 Blyth, from Armenia; and 0. nivicola, Eschsoholtz, from Kamtschatka, 

 are also described ; and another from the Caucasus is indicated, 0. cylin- 

 dricornis, Blyth. Ovis musimon, L., the Moufflon sheep, is found wild 

 in Corsica and Sardinia, and the large 0. tragelaphus, the Aondad of the 

 Moors, is found on the Atlas mountains in North Africa. Two species are 

 recorded from North America, 0. moniana, the Eocky mountain sheep, 

 and 0. californiana. 



Hodgson has published a paper on the domestic sheep of the Hima- 

 layas, with figures of many.* 



• Jour. As. Soc, Calcutta, 1M7. 



