mixed with
exceedingly fine white wool, which seems to grow only in certain
patches. The neck is relatively much thicker than that of other
animals of the same size; the legs and hoofs are also strongly built,
like the neck." The horns of the female are comparatively small,
flat, and have only a small bend backward; they are of a
dirty-yellowish white, marked with closely connected annulations to
the very tip. The legs are brown, as are also the ends of the hairs
about the neck; the hoofs are black. "A ewe will weigh about 100 lb.
when in full flesh, with only the entrails taken out. The head bears
every resemblance to that of our European sheep." The colour of the
males is nearly the same as that of the females, only rather browner;
they are much larger and more strongly built, with a pair of enormous
horns, which incline backward. As they grow they bend downward, and in
the course of time form a complete curve and project forward. At the
root the horns are nearly three inches square, the flat sides
opposite; they are marked with closely connected ridges and end in a
tapering flat point.

When the horns grow to a great length, forming a complete curve, the
tips project on both sides of the head so as to prevent the ram from
feeding. This, with their great weight, causes the sheep to dwindle to
a mere skeleton and die. The bighorn sheep feed much in the caverns of
the Rocky Mountains, eating a kind of moss and grass growing on the
floors of these caves, and also a peculiar soft, sweet-tasting "clay",
of which the natives also are fond.

The southern part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of
western North America (_Mazama macrotis_), and a very strange rodent,
the sewellel or mountain beaver (_Haplodon_), a creature distantly
allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its
distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British
Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in the landscape are the
white-headed sea eagles and Californian condors (_Pseudogryphus
californianus_). Humming-birds range through British Columbia and
Vancouver Island between mid-April and October.

In the regions about the upper Kootenay River (Eastern British
Columbia), before the railway was constructed, there were wild horses,
descended, no doubt, from those which had escaped from the Spaniards
in New Mexico and California. They went in large herds, and in the
winter when the snow was deep the natives would try to