28o THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



argalis, is, as mentioned above, paralleled by the 

 easternmost race. 



In an article published in The Field oi OctohQV 

 1909, Mr. Carruthers suggested that this sheep is 

 akin to the urial, but, as was pointed out by myself 

 in the same journal, the points of the horns of 

 nigrimontana turn outwards to a much greater 

 extent — with a concomitant increase in the span — in 

 a manner unknown in any race of the urial ; while 

 in none of the latter is the inferior surface of the 

 horn visible in the descending portion of the spiral 

 in the manner seen in nigrimontana and littledalei. 

 Then, again, the description given by Mr. 

 Carruthers of the colouring of the coat of his 

 specimen appears to agree much better with that 

 of the argali than that of the urial type ; while he 

 makes no mention of the long throat-ruff so char- 

 acteristic of the latter. 



Mr, Carruthers also states that the nearest 

 neighbour of nigrimontana is the sheep from the 

 Alexandrovski mountains, west of Issik Kul, de- 

 scribed by Severtzow as Ovis heinsi, and this he 

 admits to approach the one identified with karelini, 

 which, like littledalei, is not far irom poli. Accord- 

 ingly, both on structural and distributional grounds, 

 there seems every reason to regard nigrimontana as 

 a dwarf race allied to O. ammon littledalei, and 

 O. a. poll. This is practically the view taken 

 by Dr. Blanford, who in his account of the mam- 



