Argali

Argali (Ovis ammon), called also the Ammon, a large wild sheep, ranging from Siberia to the more elevated regions of the Himalayas. An adult male has been known to stand four feet at the shoulder, and the animal has a most stately appearance from the erect carriage of the head. The horns of the male are terrible weapons, being sometimes as much as four feet long, and twenty-two inches in circumference at the base, forming a single sweep of nearly four-fifths of a circle, the points turning slightly outwards, and ending bluntly. The general colour is dark brown above, paler beneath, with a whitish disc on the rump; there is a kind of mane, white in the male, dark brown in the female, and the tail is a mere stump. In the female the horns do not exceed twenty-two inches. The white-breasted Argali (Ovis poli), or Marco Polo's sheep, from the Pamir Plateau, Central Asia, is a closely allied species; a pair of its horns in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, measures fifty-six inches from tip to tip; while each horn measures sixty-four inches along the curves, and describes more than a circle and a quarter when viewed from the side. The Bighorn or Rocky Mountain Sheep (q.v.) is often called the American Argali.