220 Sheep
hairs being dull rusty, thus making the fur look as though it had been
slightly singed. In winter pure white.
Distribution.— Typically from the Upper Yukon Valley, Alaska, near
where it crosses the British boundary, and extending as far north as
about latitude 70°. The following passage occurs in Mr. Nelson’s original
description :—“ From Mr. M'Questen, and various other -fur-traders along
the Yukon and elsewhere, I learned that the range of this form covers
nearly all the mainland of Alaska where there are mountains, excepting
the vicinity of the Bering Sea coast. It is limited strictly to the mainland,
and occurs only among the higher parts of the mountains south of
about 68° of latitude, but north of this it is found on lower ground, and
as the mountains give place to low hills and rolling plains near the Arctic
coast, it descends nearly or quite to the sea-level.
“ Among the natives I have seen typical skins from the mountains
south of the Upper Kuskoquim river ; from the headwaters of the
Tanana ; from the Kadiak Peninsula_.near Bering Strait ; also from the
mountains east and north-east of Kotzebue Sounds and, during the summer
of 1881, while cruising between Kotzebue Sound and Point Barrow, we
saw hundreds of skins among the Eskimos,; who invariably pointed to
the low range of mountains a few miles back from the coast, when asked
where the sheep were found.
“ While hunting near Cape Thompson, on the Arctic coast, in the
middle of July 1881, I saw a pair of these animals within about five miles
of the coast, at an elevation of not over 300 feet above the sea. They
were feeding on an open grassy plain at the foot of a series of low hills,
over which they ran the moment they caught wind of me, as I tried to
approach along the bed of a small gully.”
In a later paper Mr. Nelson writes as follows concerning this sheep :—
“ Two species of mountain sheep, quite different from one another and
from the Rocky Mountain bighorn, are known in North-Western America.