THE MOUNTAIN SHEEP 
Colour, dark brown all over, with small white rump patch and horns 
small. These sheep were evidently a dwarf race closely allied to No. 8, and 
in appearance and size bear little affinity to the sheep of East Kootenay 
and Lillooet, which are of the typical race. 
Mr Charles Sheldon has probably made a more comprehensive study 
of the North American sheep than any other traveller and naturalist. 
He has made many expeditions to Alaska and British Columbia for the 
purpose of determining the local areas occupied by each of the various 
races, and has found that whilst certain mountain ranges are occupied by 
the admitted sub-species, these same areas are also inhabited by some- 
times three, four and five of the other intermediate grades of colour. 
For instance, the area touching the Glenlyon Mountains on the north, 
the high branches of the Liard on the east, Cassiar on the south and 
Atlin on the west, is occupied by five distinct types of sheep, all inter grading 
between nearly true dalli and darkest forms of fannini. To this number 
I can add true stonei , for I saw two rams that were killed on the Tanzilla, 
a river to the north-west of Dease Lake, and within the said area, which 
in no way differ from those shot the same year in the Iskoot Mountains, 
south of the Stickine, which is the admitted area of stonei . Moreover, 
my friend, Lieutenant Dalgleish,who hunted one winter in Atlin and killed 
a record head there, tells me he saw two or three sheep which were “ pure 
white all over ” (except black tail) and this would mean that true dalli also 
inhabit the same area. This means that all these northern sheep can be found 
in one small area of, roughly, 300 by 300 miles, and that it is therefore 
practically impossible to separate them, since all nine types figured by 
Mr Sheldon (“The Wilderness of the Upper Yukon,” p. 299) overlap and 
interbreed, and must therefore be considered as one and the same animal, 
governed in colour by local conditions and climate. 
Mr Sheldon’s conclusions are more worth studying than those of 
naturalists who have described individual sheep, gathered at haphazard 
from widely different areas. He says (id., p. 299): 
“ The habits of all sheep on this continent, existing north of the 
range of the Rocky Mountain sheep, Ovis canadensis , are the same 
except so far as they are slightly varied by local topographic and food 
conditions and by the accumulation of snow on their ranges during 
the winter. The environment and the climatic conditions where they 
live are practically the same, their natural enemies are the same, and 
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