Ibex
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Ibex. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a wild goat, or rather several species of wild goats, the best known of which is the common ibex (Capra ibex). It is the ibex of the IBEX ancient Romans, the steinbock of the Germans, and the bouquetin of the French. The adult male is about five feet long from nose to tip of tail, and two feet eight inches high at the shoulder. The horns are flat, with two longitudinal ridges at the sides, crossed by numerous transverse knots; they are subvertical, curved backward, dark in color. The hair is red-brown in summer and gray-brown in winter, the beard short and dark, the inside of the ears and under part of the tail white. The general color of the female is earthy-brown and ashy. The young are gray. It inhabits the highest regions of the Alps. An analogous species, the C. pyrenaicus, is found on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. Three other species are found upon the Asiatic, and two more on the Abyssinian and Nubian mountains.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
i'beks, a wild goat. There are several species found in the mountain ranges of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The common ibex of the Caucasus, the Alps, and the Apennines is a brownish gray animal about 41/2 feet long and something less than three feet high. It is a fine mountain climber, like the chamois in its habits, with a pair of large backward-curving horns that sometimes attain a length of three feet. It is, of course, a game animal, attaining a weight of perhaps 200 pounds. See Chamois
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote in 1921 that the ibex "inhabits the highest regions of the Alps," the Alpine ibex was hanging on in one place only: a remnant of perhaps a few hundred animals in the Gran Paradiso range of Italy, protected as a royal hunting reserve. Every Alpine ibex alive today, some 50,000 across Switzerland, France, Austria and Italy, descends from that single population, rebuilt by reintroductions begun in the 1900s and continuing through the century. The Pyrenean form Collier's calls C. pyrenaicus fared worse: the bucardo subspecies of the Spanish Pyrenees died out in January 2000 when the last female was killed by a falling tree, and a cloned kid born in 2003 lived only minutes, the first and briefest de-extinction on record. Aiton's 1910 note that the ibex is "of course, a game animal" now reads oddly; the Alpine ibex is a protected species, and the Ethiopian walia ibex is listed as endangered.
Written for this edition, 2026.