Like others of our ungulates, wild sheep are great frequenters of “licks”—­places where the soil has been more or less impregnated with saline solutions.  These licks are visited frequently—­perhaps daily—­during the summer months by sheep of all ages, and such points are favorite watching places for men who need meat, and wish to secure it as easily as possible.  At a certain lick in northern Montana, shots at sheep may be had almost any day by the man who is willing to watch for them.  In the summer of 1903 a bunch of nine especially good rams visited a certain lick each day.  The guide of a New York man who was hunting there in June—­of course in violation of the law—­took him to the lick.  The first day nine rams came, and the New Yorker, after firing many shots, frightened them all away.  Perhaps he hit some of them, for the next day only seven returned, of which three were killed.  In British Columbia I have seen twenty-five or thirty sheep working at a lick, from which the earth had been eaten away, so that great hollows and ravines were cut out in many directions from the central spring.

Examination of such licks in cold—­freezing—­weather, seems to show that the sheep do not then visit them.  I have seen mule deer and sheep nibbling the soil in company, and have seen white goats visit a lick frequented also by sheep.

Of Dall’s sheep, Mr. Stone declares that it is rapidly growing scarcer, and this statement is based not only on his own observation, but on reports made to him by the Indians.  Mr. Stone describes it as possessing wonderful agility, endurance, and vitality, and gives many examples of their ability to get about among most difficult rocks when wounded.  He adds:  “From my experience with these animals, I believe they seek quite as rugged a country in which to make their homes as does the Rocky Mountain goat.  They brave higher latitudes and live in regions in every way more barren and forbidding.”  He reports the females with their lambs as generally keeping to the high table lands far back in the mountains.  Among the specimens which he recently collected, broken jaw bones reunited were so frequent among the females killed as to excite comment.  Notwithstanding Mr. Stone’s gloomy view of the future of this species, we may hope that the enforcement of the game laws in Alaska will long preserve this beautiful animal.

Our knowledge of the habits of the Lower California sheep inhabiting the San Pedro Martir Mountains has been slight.  Mr. Gould’s admirable account of a hunting trip for them—­“To the Gulf of Cortez,” published in a preceding volume of the Club’s book—­will be remembered, and the curious fact stated by his Indian guide that the sheep break holes in the hard, prickly rinds of the venaga cactus with their horns, and then eat out the inside.

Recently, however, a series of thirteen specimens collected by Edmund Heller were received by Dr. D.G.  Elliot, and described, as already stated, and he gives from Mr. Heller’s note-book the following notes on their habits: