282 THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



dition of the mounted specimen in the British 

 Museum (Nat. Hist.), the upper part of the face 

 is brownish and the muzzle white. In this specimen, 

 which appears to be an adult male, the horns mea- 

 sure 48 inches in length, with a basal girth of 15 

 inches, and a tip-to-tip interval of 38 inches. A 

 skull and horns of an argali brought by Mr. D. 

 Carruthers from the Aksai plateau of Chinese Tur- 

 kestan are of the same general type as the above. 

 The last of the argalis is the great sheep inhabit- 



SkuU and Horns of the Pamir Argali, or Marco Polo's Sheep 



ing the Pamirs, or " Roof of the World," which takes 

 its name from the Venetian traveller Marco Polo, by 

 whom it was discovered in the thirteenth century. 

 In this race {O. animon poll) the enormous horns of 

 old rams are longer and relatively narrower than in 

 any of the other argalis, forming much more than 

 one complete circle, with the front surface markedly 

 angulated, and the maximum lengths ranging from 

 about 69 to 75 inches, the girth from 14^10 16, or, 

 rarely, 1 7 inches, and the tip-to-tip interval from 48 

 to 56 inches. 



