[With reference to Wood’s remark that the horns of the Ovis Poli supply shoes for the Kirghiz horses, Mr. Rockhill writes to me that a Paris newspaper of 24th November, 1894, observes:  “Horn shoes made of the horn of sheep are successfully used in Lyons.  They are especially adapted to horses employed in towns, where the pavements are often slippery.  Horses thus shod can be driven, it is said, at the most rapid pace over the worst pavement without slipping.”

(Cf.  Rockhill, Rubruck, p. 69; Chasses et Explorations dans la Region des Pamirs, par le Vte.  Ed. de Poncins, Paris, 1897, 8vo.—­H.  C.).]

[Illustration:  Ovis Poli, the Great Sheep of Pamir. (After Severtsof.)

“El hi a grant montitude de monton sauvages qe sunt grandisme, car out lee cornes bien six paumes"....]

In 1867 this great sheep was shot by M. Severtsof, on the Plateau of Aksai, in the western Thian Shan.  He reports these animals to go in great herds, and to be very difficult to kill.  However, he brought back two specimens.  The Narin River is stated to be the northern limit of the species.[5] Severtsof also states that the enemies of the Ovis Poli are the wolves, [and Colonel Gordon says that the leopards and wolves prey almost entirely upon them. (On the Ovis Poli, see Captain Deasy, In Tibet, p. 361.)—­H.  C.]

Colonel Gordon, the head of the exploring party detached by Sir Douglas Forsyth, brought away a head of Ovis Poli, which quite bears out the account by its eponymus of horns “good 6 palms in length,” say 60 inches.  This head, as I learn from a letter of Colonel Gordon’s to a friend, has one horn perfect which measures 65-1/2 inches on the curves; the other, broken at the tip measures 64 inches; the straight line between the tips is 55 inches.

[Captain Younghusband [1886] “before leaving the Altai Mountains, picked up several heads of the Ovis Poli, called Argali by the Mongols.  They were somewhat different from those which I afterwards saw at Yarkand, which had been brought in from the Pamir.  Those I found in the Gobi were considerably thicker at the base, there was a less degree of curve, and a shorter length of horn.”  A full description of the Ovis Poli, with a large plate drawing of the horns, may be seen in Colonel Gordon’s Roof of the World. (See p. 81.) (Proc.  R. G. S. X. 1888, p. 495.) Some years later, Captain Younghusband speaks repeatedly of the great sport of shooting Ovis Poli. (Proc.  R. G. S. XIV. 1892, pp. 205, 234.)—­H.  C.]

As to the pasture, Timkowski heard that “the pasturage of Pamir is so luxuriant and nutritious, that if horses are left on it for more than forty days they die of repletion.” (I. 421.) And Wood:  “The grass of Pamir, they tell you, is so rich that a sorry horse is here brought into good condition in less than twenty days; and its nourishing qualities are evidenced in the productiveness of their ewes, which almost invariably bring forth two lambs at a birth.” (P. 365.)