THE STORY OF THE CHAMOIS. 
437 
regions which it inhabits. The colors of both sexes are the same, but the 
females are rather smaller than the males, and have horns less abruptly 
hooked backward. 
The food of the chamois consists of mountain herbs, flowers, and the 
tender shoots of trees and shrubs; it seldom drinks. Nothing can be more 
admirable than the agility with which it ascends and descends rocks appar¬ 
ently perpendicular. It does not descend at a single bound nor in a vertical 
THE CHAMOIS AND ITS HABITS. 
direction, but projecting itself obliquely or diagonally forward, striking the 
face of the rock three or four times with its feet for the purpose of renewing 
its force, or directing it more steadily to the point it aims at. 
The chamois is found in all the high mountain-chains of Europe and 
western Asia, in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathian and Grecian moun¬ 
tains, the chains of Caucasus and Tauras, and probably it exists in other 
situations. 
