WILD SHEEP OF ASIA AND AMERICA 253 



Their most western representative is the red 

 sheep or red mouflon of Cyprus, Asia Minor, and 

 Persia. On the frontiers of the last-named country 

 and Turkestan we enter the domain of the urial or 

 shapo, which extends into the Himalaya; Central 

 Asia is the home of the argalis, the biggest and 

 fi lest representatives of the whole group ; while in 

 t.je neighbourhood of the Yana and in Kamchatka 

 we encounter the bighorns, which reappear in North 

 America, where they are the sole wild representa- 

 tives of their kind. The central Himalaya and 

 Tibet form the home of the aberrant bharal or 

 blue sheep, which forms in many respects a con- 

 necting link between sheep and goats. 



Commencing with the most western representa- 

 tive of the group, that is to say, the red sheep or 

 Gmelin's sheep, as it is often called {Ovis orientalis), 

 it has to be pointed out that this species has been 

 the source of considerable confusion in two distinct 

 ways. Described originally in the year 1829 by 

 the German naturalists Brandt and Ratzeburg ^ as 

 a variety of the European mouflon, under the name 

 of Ovis musimon orientalis, it was stated to be a 

 native of the mountains of Persia, the Grecian 

 Islands, Cyprus, and probably the Taurus. And as 

 Persia stands first in the list of localities, it has been 

 very generally considered that the typical repre- 

 sentative of the species is a native of that country. 



• Medizinische Zoologie, p. 54, pi. ix., Berlin, 1829. 



