246 BULLETIN 56, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Mc(i>iiirpmviils (taken in flesh by colleetoi-).— Total length, 1,280; tail verte- 

 bra?, 1(10 ; hind foot, 3(i0 ; height at shoulder. 830. In the dry skin the rump 

 patch measures about 190 In breadth by 150 in length (from apparent base of 

 tail.) (I'roc. Biol. Soc. Wash., XI, pp. 217, 218.) 



Bemarks.— This was probably the first-known form of our big- 

 horns. In the first American edition of Bewick's History of Quad- 

 rupeds, published in New York in 1804, we find the following under 

 the heading of " The wild sheep of California " and a figure of a 

 male bighorn : 



These creatures were observed by the Jesuit missionaries to California as 

 long ago as the year 1697. They are of several varieties and colors and are 

 reckoned excellent and dainty food. There is a figure of one in Venegas's His- 

 tory of California, which, being incorrect, we have thought it worth the while 

 to give a new one delineated from nature (the specimen " brought to New York 

 in 1802 by Mr. M. McGillivray, who killed it in latitude 50° north "). 



In an important article On the geographical races of the Rocky 

 Mountain bighorn, by Lieut. Col. John Biddulph, F. Z. S., pub- 

 lished in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1885, 

 the author writes that — 



the earliest notice is to be found in the account of California by Father 

 Picolo, one of the first Catholic missionaries who visited that country in 1697." 

 (Abridg. Phil. Trans., London, V, p. 459.) He describes it as a sort of deer. 

 It is as large as a calf of 1 or 2 years old ; its head is much like that of a 

 stag ; its horns, which are very large, like those of a ram ; its tail and hair are 

 speckled and shorter than a stag's, but its hoof is large, round, and cleft as 

 an ox's. Their flesh is very tender and delicious. It is also mentioned by 

 other Spanish writers in California of that period. The species then appear to 

 have been lost sight of by naturalists of the eighteenth century. 



Sheep are known to live on the isolated mountains of the Colorado 

 Desert, in Lower California. Sometimes they are killed on the des- 

 ert plain; but at such times they are probably passing from one 

 range to another. A few horns and bones of sheep were seen in 

 crossing the Colorado Desert; one horn of a young male at Gardners 

 Laguna, Salton River, Lower California (No. 60863, U.S.N.M.). 

 As soon as the Coast Range was reached we saw many horns and a 

 few fresh tracks about the rugged peaks. My Cocopa Indian hunter, 

 Miguel, told me that he had slain many sheep on mountains which 

 he pointed out from my camp opposite the mouth of Hardy River, 

 near the mouth of the Colorado River. These mountains were a 

 little south of west from that point. Miguel and others informed 

 me that sheep were then abundant in most of the rocky ranges of 

 northern Lower California. A ranchman whom I met in the Coast 

 Range Mountains told me that some of his cowboys had roped (las- 

 soed) and captured a mountain sheep on the Colorado Desert near 

 Mesquite Lake. I find a memorandum of August 7, 1886, from an 

 acquaintance, informing me that two Indian boys in the employ of 



