Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/361

Rh tains, though very difficult to get at in summer. The Elk was formerly more numerous in the northern districts, but has now become extremely rare; and the single head which Mr. Elwes brought back resembles those which he had seen from European Russia, differing somewhat in the set of the horns from the Elk of Norway. The Roe (Capreolus pygargus, Pallas) is very common in some parts of the Altai and Sayansk Mountains, and is a very much larger and finer animal than the European Roe. The wide spread of the horns is not a peculiarity of this species, as it would appear from the nine heads which were exhibited—six from the Upper Yenesei Valley and three from the Altai—that this peculiarity is by no means constant, and that there is nothing but their size to distinguish them from the European race. The Musk-Deer is also very abundant near the upper limit of forest growth, and is snared in quantities by the natives. As many as two hundred skins were seen in one merchant's store. Reindeer are said by Radde to occur in some parts of the Eastern Sayansk range, where they are also kept in a domesticated state; but, so far as could be ascertained, they do not exist in any part of the Altai.

Birds were not so numerous as expected, although Cranes and Ducks were plentiful in the marshes of the Kurai and Tchuja Steppes. Mr. Elwes was astonished to find a Scoter breeding here, which proves to be the species described as Oidemia stejnegeri, and which is an inhabitant of the N.W. American coast and North Pacific. It has never been hitherto procured, as he was informed by M. Alpheraky (who is at present engaged on a monograph of the Anatidæ of the Russian Empire), farther west than the Upper Amur.

Game-birds were very scarce, though Capercaillie, Ptarmigan, and Quail were observed; and in the highest and barest parts of the mountains the magnificent Tetragallus altaicus was not uncommon, though very hard to approach.

The fauna and flora are materially influenced by the very peculiar climate of the Altai, which has great extremes of heat and cold, and is subject to heavy thunderstorms, which fall as snow and hail in the higher regions, almost daily throughout the summer. During the whole of the two months the party were in the mountains they only had seven or eight days quite free from rain or snow. These heavy storms seem mostly to come from the eastward, and from the high mountains at the source of the Kemchik River, which is the westernmost tributary of the Yenesei. To show what sort of climate it is, it was mentioned that there were large beds of unmelted snow close to the camp, at about 7000 ft., all through July.

year the Hon. Cecil Rhodes had five hundred young Rooks sent out to South Africa in order to establish a colony in his country place, and