OCR Text |
Show 1875.] ON ASIATIC SHEEP. 519 1766. Ovis argali, Pall. Spic. Zool. fasc. xi. p. 20, tab. 1, 2. 1862. Ovis argali, Radde, Reis. im Sud. v. O.-Sib. p. 238. Adult 3, summer?, in Mus. Brit., received from Brandt, Mus. St. Petersburg. Locality given, Siberia (specimen n of list). Hair soft and close-set, about an inch in length; the same length on neck and body. General colour of the head, neck, body, belly, limbs externally as far as the carpi and tarsi rufous brown, tinged with grey. On the face the grey predominates greatly. There is also a strong shade of grey on the upper parts of the neck and shoulders. On the lower parts of the body the rufous becomes more intense. The upper part of the tail is fawn-colour. There is no sign of a white disk round the tail, the brown of the haunches becoming merely paler on the infra-anal parts. Limbs from the carpi and tarsi downwards dirty white, clearest on the inside. Horns massive, their points of moderate length, and turned boldly outwards. (For further particulars vide list, specimen n.) Adult 3} winter ?, Mus. Lugd., received from Brandt, Mus. St. Petersburg. Locality given, Siberia (specimen o of list). The general colour of this specimen is much the same as that last described, perhaps rather brighter. A pure white disk surrounds the tail, and runs down the haunches posteriorly. The hair of the neck is slightly lengthened, but of the same colour as that of the body. The white of the anterior parts of the face, lower limbs, and posterior part of the belly is much purer than is the case in the former specimen. The horns are very massive and deeply sulcated (vide list, spec. o). Adult 2 > season?, Mus. Brit, from St. Petersburg. Darker than the male in the same collection. An indistinct pale disk surrounds. the tail. Horns 2 0 V long, 7" in circumference. Adult 3, autumn?, Mus. Amsterdam. Locality given, Northern Asia (specimen p of list). Centre of back hoary ; lower parts of body brownish grey. The rump is white, but the white does not surround the tail so as to form a disk. Hair on the neck not longer than that on the body. Bange.-The range of this species appears to be of great extent; but its boundaries are as yet most uncertain. Radde, in his ' Reisen im Siiden von Ost-Sibirien,' published in 1862, p. 239, thus writes :- " Since the winter of 1831-32, the Argali has not been met with on the Daurian frontier, and it is also extinct in East Siberia." And again, at p. 241 :-"The Argali avoids damp wooded mountains; it is wanting' in the Kentei and Southern Apfel Mountains. This latter, as well as the adjoining Chingan and Bureja ranges, and iudeed the greater part of the Stanovoi Mountains, appear to possess no representative of the genus Mgocerus. . . . To the Birar Tun-euses as well as to the Daurians, who possess information of Eastern Mongolia as far as Dalai-nor, was the Argali Sheep known only by name In entire Russian Dauria, as well as in the Baikal Mountains, the hunters could tell m e nothing of the occurrence of either the Areali or JEgocerus sibiricus. To the far south of Kentei is the Argah first met with, from which place the Cossacks of the frontier stations |