Page:Whymper - Scrambles amongst the Alps.djvu/354

298 seventeen fell to his gun at one hundred yards and upwards. In 1868 his Majesty presented a fine specimen to the Italian Alpine Club. The members banqueted, I believe, upon its flesh, and they have had the skin stuffed, and set up in their rooms at Aosta. It is said by connoisseurs to be badly stuffed,—that it is not broad enough in the chest, and is too large behind. Still it looks well proportioned, although it seems made for hard work rather than for feats of agility. From this specimen the accompanying engraving has been made.

It is a full-grown male, about twelve years old, and if it stood upright would measure 3 feet 3½ inches from the ground to the base of its horns. Its extreme length is 4 feet 7 inches. Its horns have eleven well-marked rings, besides one or two faintly-marked ones, and are (measured round their curvature) 53½ centimètres in length. The horns of the specimen referred to on (measured in the same way) had a length of only 53 1 centimetres, although they were ornamented with nearly double the number of rings, and were presumably of double the age of the former.

The keepers, and the chasseurs of this district, not only say that the rings upon the horns of the ibex tell its age (each one reckoning as a year), but that the half-developed ones, which sometimes are very feebly marked indeed, show that the animal has suffered from hunger during the winter. Naturalists are sceptical upon this point; but inasmuch as they offer no better reason against the reputed fact than the natives do in its favour (one saying that it is not so, and the other saying that it is so), we may, perhaps, be permitted to consider it an open question. I can only say that if the faintly-marked rings do denote years of famine, the times for the bouquetin are very hard indeed; since, in most of the horns which I have seen, the lesser rings have been very numerous, and sometimes more plentiful than the prominent ones.