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Show 1885.] DR. F. H. H. GUILLEMARD ON OVIS NIVICOLA. 675 moment to call to mind a fable of the Monkey who had seen the world. Now, supposing the Monkey to have been a collector of animals, and in Europe to have obtained some white people with red or fair hair, and upon his arrival in Africa to have met with the Negroes black as jet, w\th flat noses, thick lips, and black woolly heads, he would have been justified in regarding them as a very well-marked and distinct species. W e are, however, in a position better able to understand that time, climate, food, and other circumstances may change the condition and appearance that the original type may be said to have disappeared altogether. I venture to say this change is now taking place, however slowly it may be. It is noticeable in America, and doubtless in a few generations (without fresh arrivals of Europeans) the descendants of Europeans are gradually developing the peculiarities of the original natives of that country. In conclusion I feel it is necessary to offer a few words in defence of naming animals that are nearly allied and calling them by new names, in order to constitute them as species. This practice has of late received a check ; and it appears to me a very reasonable and proper mode of treating the subject to consider a large number of the animals that exhibit a few trifling differences to be only local varieties of the same species. At the same time we must bear in mind that in order to do this we should seek for intermediate forms or individuals that may be regarded as uniting two extremely different creatures. In the present instance I have failed to find any animal showing this tendency to be intermediate between this animal and the well-known Chimpanzee. 7. Remarks on Ovis nivicola. B y F. H. H. G U I L L E M A R D, M.A., M.D., F.L.S., F.Z.S., &c. [Received June 16, 1885.] The few notes I have on the habits and structural peculiarities the Kamschatkan Wild Sheep, Ovis nivicola, Eschscholtz, a series of the skulls of which I have the honour of exhibiting, may possibly be of interest. In the beginning of August 1882, Mr. Kettlewell's yacht ' Marchesa ' arrived in Petropaulovsky, and shortly afterwards a small party, of which I was a member, started on an expedition through the centre of the peninsula, and, striking the great Kamschatka River near its source, descended it a distance of 450 miles to the sea. Our land journey led us through more or less mountainous country, and we had hoped to obtain information concerning Big-horn at Gunol, a little settlement of cross-bred Siberians and Kamschatdales, in the centre of the southern part of the peninsula. Near this place is a small range of low mountains, bare and rocky, about three or four thousand feet in height, the summits only of which were covered with snow. W e were informed |