284 THE SHEEP AND ITS COUSINS 



finest pairs of horns on record respectively measure 

 75> 72)' 7i> 3"d 70 inches along the front angle; 

 their basal girths being 16, 15, 15I, and 17 inches, 

 and the tip -to -tip intervals 54J, 48, 53f, and 

 52 inches." 



The home of this sheep is the high Pamir and 

 the plateaus west and north of Eastern Turkestan 

 extending to the Alai, and, in the direction of India, 

 to the upper part of the Hunza and Nagar valleys, 

 to the northward of Gilgit. Its habits appear to be 

 practically identical with those of the other races of 

 the species. A correspondent who was shooting a 

 few years ago in the neighbourhood of the Tian 

 Shan informed me that no good heads of this sheep 

 were then obtainable on the neighbouring Pamirs, 

 no specimen with horns exceeding 53 inches in 

 length having been shot there since 1905. He 

 added that out of a large number of specimens he 

 has seen none exceeding these dimensions. 



Two Spanish missionaries appear to have been 

 the first to make known to Europeans the existence 

 of a wild sheep in North America. According to a 

 summary of the account of this discovery given by 

 Dr. J. A. Allen :^ "Father Juan Maria de Salva- 

 tierra crossed the Gulf of California from the mouth 

 of the Yaqui River, Sonora, to California, and took 

 formal possession of the country in the name of the 



• " Historical and Nomendatorial Notes on North American 

 Sheep," Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xxxi. p. 19, 1912. 



