ORIGIN OF AMERICAN MOUNTAIN SHEEP 37 
Fannin’s Mountain SHEEP! is a comparatively new 
subspecies, found first on the Klondike River, Yukon Terri- 
tory, in 1900. It is about the size of the white sheep, and 
has a snow-white head, neck and tail-patch, and a bluish-gray 
body, like a white sheep covered with a gray blanket. It 
also has a blue-gray tail, and a band of brown running down 
the front of each leg. The type specimen was sent from 
Dawson City to the Provincial Museum at Victoria, B. C., 
in 1900, and since then many others have been taken. This 
form is a connecting link between the white sheep and the 
black sheep, and inasmuch as specimens vary in color both 
ways into the White and Black species, it would seem that 
Nature has not yet completed her, work of segregating 
Fannin’s Sheep as a clearly defined species. 
In the table printed on page 38 are given measurements 
in inches of some of the largest and finest wild-sheep horns 
with which I am personally acquainted. 
OrIGIn or AMERICAN Mountain SHEEP.—It seems highly 
probable that a number of species of North American mam- 
mals and birds were acquired by immigration from the Old 
World. Of this there is no stronger evidence than that fur- 
nished by the genus Ovis, which was cradled in the mountains 
of Central Asia. Western Mongolia and Tibet have pro- 
duced the colossal Argali, the wonderful, wide-horned Polo 
Sheep, and the robust Siar Sheep. 
As the genus spread southward, it produced the small 
Urial and Burrhel, and stopped short at the northern edge 
of the superheated plains of India. But northward its fate 
10. dall't fan’nin-t. 
