The Sheep and Its Cousins (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII TYPICAL WILD SHEEP OF ASIA AND AMERICA As wild sheep form the subject of several works 1 and numerous articles in scientific journals, they are discussed much less fully in the present volume than the domesticated breeds, of which the account given in the preceding chapters is claimed to be unique. In Asia wild sheep inhabit the Troodos mountains of Cyprus, and the more or less continuous mountain-chains extending from Anatolia on the extreme west of Asia Minor, through Armenia, Persia, Baluchistan, the north-west frontier districts of India, Afghanistan, Bokhara, Turkestan, the Altai, the Pamirs, the Himalaya, Tibet, the Tian Shan, and Mongolia to the Yana and Kamchatka in the extreme north-east. On the American side of Bering Strait they reappear in Alaska, whence they range southwards through the chain of the Rocky Mountains to the highlands of Mexico. 'E.g. Wild Oxen, Sheep, and Goats, by the present writer, London, 1908. The classification of the sheep there given is somewhat out of date, and an amended scheme, likewise by the present writer, will be found in the sixth edition of Rowland Ward's Records of Big Game, London, 1911. 35a Their most western representative is the red sheep or red mouflon of Cyprus, Asia Minor, and Persia. On the frontiers of the last-named country and Turkestan we enter the domain of the urial or shapo, which extends into the Himalaya; Central Asia is the home of the argalis, the biggest and finest representatives of the whole group; while in the neighbourhood of the Yana and in Kamchatka we encounter the bighorns, which reappear in North America, where they are the sole wild representatives of their kind. The central Himalaya and Tibet form the home of the aberrant bharal or blue sheep, which...