THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
from the high interior of central Asia. It inhabits the 
plateaus and mountains of Tibet and Mongolia, keeping 
near the snow, whose retreat it follows in summer to 
the height of eighteen thousand feet or more in pur- 
suit of the game, so that it is not surprising to find it clothed 
in a long, dense, woolly coat very light gray in color above and 
pure white on the under parts. 
Ounce. 
The markings are leopardlike blackish rosettes, most of them filled 
with a dusky tint and becoming black circles on the long heavy tail. The 
THE SNOW LEOPARD. 
result is a pelt of peculiar beauty and market value. The legs are short, 
and the fore ones have the massive strength needed by such a climber and 
hunter of powerful game. The ounce is rarely seen, though numerous, at 
least in the northwestern Himalaya, for it goes abroad mainly at night, and 
is timid. It preys upon wild sheep and goats, musk deer and mountain 
marmots; and in winter seizes the smaller domestic animals of the villagers, 
but never attacks man. The only example ever seen alive in Europe lived 
for a few months in 1894 in the London “Zoo,” and was perfectly gentle, 
“suffering itself to be led or pulled about by the keeper, and taking its 
rations of boiled mutton out of his hand without a sign of hostility.” 
Captain Baldwin, in his book on the large game of Bengal, has a most 
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