MAMMALIA. 273 



and craggy ridges with which the country between the great mountain range and 

 the Pacific is intersected ; but they do not appear to have advanced further to the 

 eastward than the declivity of the Rocky Mountains, nor are they found in any of 

 the hilly tracts nearer to Hudson's Bay. They collect in flocks consisting of 

 from three to thirty, the young rams and the females herding together during the 

 winter and spring, while the old rams form separate flocks, except during the 

 month of December, which is their rutting season. The ewes bring forth in June 

 or July,, and then retire with their lambs to the most inaccessible heights. Mr. 

 Drummond informs me that in the retired parts of the mountains, where the 

 hunters had seldom penetrated, he found no difficulty in approaching the Rocky- 

 Mountain sheep, which there exhibited the simplicity of character so remarkable 

 in the domestic species ; but that where they had been often fired at, they were 

 exceedingly wild, alarmed their companions on the approach of danger by a 

 hissing noise, and scaled the rocks with a speed and agility that baffled pursuit. 

 He lost several that he had mortally wounded, by their retiring to die amongst the 

 secluded precipices. Their favourite feeding places are grassy knolls, skirted 

 by craggy rocks, to which they can retreat when pursued by dogs or wolves. 

 They are accustomed to pay daily visits to certain caves in the mountains, that 

 are encrusted with a saline efflorescence, of which they are fond. These caves are 

 situated in slaty rocks, and it was in them alone that Mr. Drummond found the 

 Weissia macrocarpa growing. The same gentleman mentions that the horns of 

 the old rams attain a size so enormous, and curve so much forwards and down- 

 wards, that they effectually prevent the animal from feeding on level ground. 

 The flesh of the Rocky Mountain sheep is stated by Mr. Drummond and others, 

 who have fed on it, to be quite delicious when it is in season, far superior to that 

 of any of the deer species which frequent the same quarter, and even exceeding in 

 flavour the finest English mutton. The Kamschatdales, in like manner, esteem the 

 flesh of the argali as food fit for the gods. 



The missionaries who first discovered the Rocky Mountain sheep, or the nearly 

 allied species of California, described it correctly as possessing the hair of the stag 

 and the horns of the ram; and M. Geoffroy has also briefly characterised it as 

 having the head of a sheep with the body of a deer. Several naturalists of 

 eminence have considered it as forming but one species with the argali ; and 

 Baron Cuvier supposes that it may have crossed Behring's Straits on the ice. It 

 resembles the argali, indeed, perfectly in its manners, in the form of its body, and 

 in the nature and colours of its hairy coat ; but it seems to be a larger animal, and 

 to present a constant difference in the form of curvature of its horns. Whether it 



