LITERARY NOTICES. 



271 



brush, prairies, rolling hills, and fantasti- 

 cally carved and colored " bad lands." The 

 country was won from the Indians only 

 about half a dozen years ago, and was al- 

 most immediately occupied by the cattle- 

 herders, owning from hundreds to tens of 

 thousands of head, and occupying land of 

 extent to correspond, with not very exactly 

 defined boundaries and no legal titles. With 

 them came the now famous cowboys, of 

 whom and their habits Mr. Roosevelt gives 

 a very interesting description. The home- 

 life of thi3 wild region, which is, of course, 

 usually a bachelor's life, with cowboys for 

 neighbors, and rough enough, forms the 

 subject of a lively running sketch, passing 

 from topic to topic, after which the reader 

 is introduced to the game in its several 

 kinds waterfowl, grouse, jack-rabbits, wild 

 turkeys, and the larger animals. The white- 

 tailed deer is the best known and most 

 widely distributed of all the large game of 

 the United States, and the kind which un- 

 der any sort of decent treatment is proba- 

 bly likely to stay longest at large among us. 

 These deer have the capacity of living in a 

 region even when it has become thickly 

 settled, and making themselves at home 

 among tame cattle, and still exist in nearly 

 every State. They "are very canny, and 

 know perfectly well what threatens danger 

 and what does not; keep themselves con* 

 cealed in the densest thickets of the river- 

 bottoms, and at the first intimation of dan- 

 ger steal off noiselessly almost from under 

 the eyes of the hunter." Mr. Roosevelt tells 

 of the best ways of killing them, but our 

 interest is in the ways they have of keeping 

 from being killed, in which we hope they 

 will improve. The black-tail deer, more 

 important animals in some respects, in their 

 unsophisticated state are very easy to ap- 

 proach, but a short experience of danger on 

 their part changes their character, and when 

 hunters are often afoot, they become "as 

 wild and wary as may be." They would be 

 extremely difficult to hunt except for their 

 inordinate curiosity, which gives them the 

 habit of turning round every once in a while, 

 stopping, and looking at their pursuer. An- 

 telopes, or prong-horns, are also very wary 

 game, but may be betrayed by their morbid 

 curiosity or their unhappy liability to be 

 thrown into a panic. No other plains game, 



except the big-horn, is as shy and sharp- 

 sighted ; " and if a man is once seen by the 

 game the latter will not let him get out of 

 sight again, unless it decides to go off at a 

 gait that soon puts half a dozen miles be- 

 tween them. It shifts its position so as to 

 keep the hunter continually in sight, . . . 

 and after it has once caught a glimpse of 

 the foe, the latter might as well give up 

 all hopes of getting the game." The big- 

 horn, or mountain sheep, "are extremely 

 wary and cautious animals, and are plentiful 

 in but few places." They are almost the 

 only kind of game on whose haunts cattle 

 do not trespass. They live on the rocks, 

 and are not annoyed by rival claimants to 

 their sterile estates. Their movements are 

 not light and graceful like those of the an. 

 telopes, but they have a marvelous agility 

 which proceeds " from sturdy strength and 

 wonderful command over iron sinews and 

 muscles." There is probably no animal in 

 the world their superior in climbing - ; and 

 " the way that one will vanish over the 

 roughest and most broken ground is a per- 

 petual surprise to any one that has hunted 

 them." Regarding the buffalo, Mr. Roose- 

 velt observes that its rapid extermination 

 " affords an excellent instance of how a 

 race that has thriven and multiplied for 

 ages under conditions of life to which it 

 has slowly fitted itself by a process of 

 natural selection continued for countless 

 generations, may succumb at once when 

 these surrounding conditions are varied by 

 the introduction of one or more new ele- 

 ments, immediately becoming the chief forces 

 with which it has to contend in the struggle 

 for life." These new elements are the bar- 

 barity of civilized man in hunting the buf- 

 falo, and the greed of the cattle-herders for 

 its pasture-lands ; and their presence has 

 made the other conditions and habits which 

 were most favorable to the preservation of 

 the animal to contribute to its extinction. 

 Happily, " events have developed a race of 

 this species, known either as the wood or 

 mountain buffalo, which is acquiring, and 

 has already largely acquired, habits widely 

 different from those of the others of its 

 kind. It is found in the wooded and most 

 precipitous portions of the mountains, in- 

 stead of on the level and open plains ; it 

 goes singly or in small parties, instead of in 



