Before closing these notes upon the sheep of Asia, may I respectfully invite the scientific naturalist to come to the assistance of the unlearned sheep-shooter?--to whom the inconvenient question is often put, ‘Are your trophies Ovis poli, karelini, or argali?’ for to this he is constrained in his ignorance to reply ‘I’ll be shot if I know!’
Would it not be well to place on record a revised classification of the sheep of Asia, before erroneously-applied names attach too firmly by common usage?
In no contentious or captious spirit I would plead for a new and distinct classification, in which the sheep of Asia, the _tûr_ of the Caucasus, and the ibex of the different parts of the world may be clearly distinguished the one from the other.
Chamois are to be found in all the higher mountain systems of Central and Southern Europe. They are indigenous to timber-line regions from the Caucasus to the Pyrenees, and from the Carpathians to the Alps of the Epirus. Switzerland and the Austrian Alps have, however, always been their chief home. To the sportsman the latter region, with its large estates and sport-loving landed aristocracy, offers a much more inviting field than does Switzerland, where the republican spirit and peasant proprietorship make the preservation of game by individuals almost impossible, and the chase in consequence uncertain and difficult. It is fair, however, to add that the efforts made by several of the Swiss Cantons in the course of the last ten or twenty years will presumably prevent the extermination of the chamois in Switzerland, which but for strictly enforced regulations would at one time have been only a matter of a few years. That the democratic spirit of republics is not one favourable to the preservation of game, we can see by the dire results it has worked in the Great Transatlantic Federation, where some species of _feræ naturæ_ have practically become extinct.
The experience of those who have killed or tried to kill chamois in the Pyrenees or in Albania would show that sport in those countries is somewhat uncertain, and to obtain it lengthy expeditions have to be undertaken, which in the majority of cases, the writer’s not excepted, are not successful. It will therefore, we are inclined to think, best serve the practical purposes of these volumes if prominence is given to chamois shooting in those regions of the Central Alps which may be considered the true home of that sport.