. Denizens of the desert; a book of southwestern mammals, birds, and reptiles, by Edmund C. Jaeger .. . oying, like our Western set-tlers and adventurers of the early days, thebuffetings of the stern elements and the free-dom of the wild places. Among all his kinsmen,it is he that has ventured farthest southwestfrom the original ancestral home in the elevatedplateaus and mountains of Turkestan. The male desert bighorn, with his stockybody, noble, splendidly poised head, and mas-sive, gracefully curled horns, is a picture ofanimal vigor. There is an appearance of naturalcomposure and dignity ab
. Denizens of the desert; a book of southwestern mammals, birds, and reptiles, by Edmund C. Jaeger .. . oying, like our Western set-tlers and adventurers of the early days, thebuffetings of the stern elements and the free-dom of the wild places. Among all his kinsmen,it is he that has ventured farthest southwestfrom the original ancestral home in the elevatedplateaus and mountains of Turkestan. The male desert bighorn, with his stockybody, noble, splendidly poised head, and mas-sive, gracefully curled horns, is a picture ofanimal vigor. There is an appearance of naturalcomposure and dignity about him that mustcompel the attention of the most disinterestedobserver. He is somewhat smaller in size andpaler in color than the Rocky Mountain big-horn, but a no less imposing creature. A full-grown individual is as large as a third-grownheifer, and may measure close to sixty inchesfrom point of nose to tip of tail. As is usualamong wild sheep, the female is smaller thanthe ram and the horns are much gives the average weights of an adultmale and female Nelson bighorn as two hun-. o < o p ill fc B < m u THE DESERT BIGHORN 137 dred and fifty and one hundred and fiftypounds respectively. Few animals support a head as heavy in pro-portion to the size of the body. A head andneck I have before me as I write weighed fortypounds when taken. The cores of the greathorns are made of almost solid bone, and theseadd greatly, of course, to the weight of therigidly built skull. Imagine if you can thenature of the impact of such a battering organwhen driven forward by the strong body it strange that in the battles which take placefor the possession of the ewes necks are brokenand lives exacted? The growth of the horns of wild sheep is acurious phenomenon which has attracted theinterest of naturalists for many years. Thebony vascular core borne on the frontal bone ispermanent, but its* covering is renewed fromtime to time by the growth of a new sheath ofcorni
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectzoology, bookyear1922
