THE WILD SHEEP (_Ovis montana_) The wild sheep ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the Sierra.

Possessed of keen sight and scent, and strong limbs, he dwells secure amid the loftiest summits, leaping unscathed from crag to crag, up and down the fronts of giddy precipices, crossing foaming torrents and slopes of frozen snow, exposed to the wildest storms, yet maintaining a brave, warm life, and developing from generation to generation in perfect strength and beauty.
Nearly all the lofty mountain-chains of the globe are inhabited by wild sheep, most of which, on account of the remote and all but inaccessible regions where they dwell, are imperfectly known as yet.

They are classified by different naturalists under from five to ten distinct species or varieties, the best known being the burrhel of the Himalaya (_Ovis burrhel_, Blyth); the argali, the large wild sheep of central and northeastern Asia (_O.

ammon_, Linn., or _Caprovis argali_); the Corsican mouflon (_O.

musimon_, Pal.); the aoudad of the mountains of northern Africa (_Ammotragus tragelaphus_); and the Rocky Mountain bighorn (_O.