1841.] A Monograph of the species of Wild Sheep. 871 



which Colonel Smith has favoured me with, represents a Sheep horn, 

 apparently of the same general form as those of the Burrhel and Nahoor ; 

 but the dimensions specified are very superior to those attained in the 

 instance of either of the two Himalayan species adverted to, and I can 

 only suppose that the (reverted ?) tips had been broken off, and the 

 truncated extremity worn smooth. The wild Sheep of Caucasus 

 and Taurus are at pl'esent little known, nor does any notice of this 

 genus occur in the catalogue of Caucasian animals, published by M. 

 M^netries ; though it is nevertheless certain, from the vague inci- 

 dental notices of various travellers, that some, and not unlikely se- 

 veral, exist. At Azaz, by the foot of Taurus, Mr. Ainsworth men- 

 tions having seen an animal, which he designates Ovis Amman, (vide 

 Travels in Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea, p. 42.)* 



9. O. Gmelini, nobis, (the Armenian Sheep.) — This species belongs 

 to the Moufflon group, but is yet very different from the Moufflon 

 Sheep of Corsica. It is described and rudely figured in the Heise 

 durch Russland (vol. iii. p. 486, and Tab. LV.,) of the younger 

 Gmelin ; and the skull and horns, forwarded by that naturalist to St. 

 Petersburgh, have been figured and described by Pallas in his 

 Spicilegia (Fasc. xii. p. 15, and Tab. V. fig. 1.) Messrs. Brandt and 

 Ratzeburg erroneously identified it, at the suggestion of M. Lichten- 

 stein, with the wild Cyprian species, the horns of which have a 

 nearly similar flexure. Fine specimens of the male, female, and young, 

 lately received by this Society from Erzeroom, enable me to give 

 the following description : — 



Size of an ordinary tame Sheep, with a remarkably short coat,f of 

 a lively chestnut-fulvous colour, deepest upon the back ; the limbs and 

 under-parts whitish, with few traces of dark markings, except a finely 

 contrasting black line of more lengthened hair down the front of 

 the neck of the male only, widening to a large patch on the breast ; 

 and in both sexes a strip of somewhat lengthened mixed black and 

 white hairs above the mid-joint of the fore-limbs anteriorly, which cor- 



* Very probably, however, this notice refers to the next species, O. Gmelini ; as 

 may, also, that of Captain Mignan, who mentions seeing "flocks of mountain Sheep, 

 the Chamois, and wild Goats," at the foot of the Aligez range. Vide * Winter Journey to 

 Koordistan,' vol. i. p. 195.— E, B. 



t Evidently the summer garb of the species.— E. B. 



