“Peter, you have been up in the Old Pasture many times, so you must have seen the Sheep there,” said Old Mother Nature, turning to Peter Rabbit.  
“Certainly. Of course,” replied Peter. “They seem to me rather stupid creatures. Anyway they look stupid.”
 
“Then you know the leader of the flock, the big with curling horns,” continued Old Mother Nature.
 
Peter nodded, and Old Mother Nature went on. “Just imagine him with a smooth coat of grayish-brown instead of a white woolly one, and immense curling horns many times larger than those he now has. Give him a large whitish or very light-yellowish patch around a very short tail. Then you will have a very good idea of one of those mountain climbers I promised to tell you about, one of the greatest mountain climbers in all the Great World—Bighorn the Mountain Sheep, also called Rocky Mountain Bighorn and Rocky Mountain Sheep.
 
“Bighorn is a true Sheep and lives high up among the rocks of the highest mountains of the Far West. Like all members of the order to which he belongs his feet are , but they are which never slip, and he delights to bound along the edges of great cliffs and in making his way up or down them where it looks as if it would be impossible for even Chatterer the Red Squirrel to find footing, to say nothing of such a big fellow as Bighorn.
 
“The mountains where he makes his home are so high that the tops of many of them are in the clouds and covered with snow even in summer. Above the line where trees can no longer grow Bighorn spends his summers, coming down to the lower hills only when the snow becomes so deep that he cannot paw down through it to get food. His eyesight is wonderful and from his high he watches for enemies below, and small chance have they of approaching him from that direction.
 
“When alarmed he bounds away as if there were great springs in his legs, and his great curled horns are carried as easily as if they were nothing at all. Down rock slopes, so steep that a single misstep would mean a fall hundreds of feet, he bounds as swiftly and easily as Lightfoot the Deer bounds through the woods, leaping from one little point of rock to another and landing securely as if he were on level ground. He climbs with equal ease where man would have to crawl and cling with fingers and toes, or give up altogether.
 
“Mrs. Bighorn does not have the great curling horns. Instead she is armed with short, sharp-pointed horns, like . Her young are born in the highest, most place she can find, and there they have little to fear save one enemy, King Eagle. Only such an enemy, one with wings, can reach them there. Bighorn and Mrs. Bighorn, because of their size, nothing to from these great birds, but helpless little lambs are continually in danger of furnishing King Eagle with the dinner he prizes.
 
“Only when driven to the lower slopes and hills by storms and snow does Bighorn have cause to fear four-footed enemies. Then the Panther must be watched for, and lower down Howler the Wolf. But Bighorn's greatest enemy, and one he fears most, is the same one so many others have sad cause to fear—the hunter with his terrible gun. The terrible gun can kill where man himself cannot climb, and Bighorn has been hunted for his head and wonderful horns.
 
“Some people believe that Bighorn leaps from cliffs and alights on those great horns, but this not true. Whenever he leaps he alights on those sure feet of his, not on his head.
 
“Way up in the extreme northwest corner of this country, in a place called Alaska, is a close cousin whose coat is all white and whose horns are yellow and more slender and wider spreading. He called the Dall Mountain Sheep. Farther south, but not as far south as the home of Bighorn, is another cousin w............