56 ANIMAL LIFE OF CARLSBAD CAVERN 



were reported south of the cave, just over the Texas 

 line. Marvin Livingston told me there were about 

 forty antelopes on his ranch, some thirty-five miles 

 east of Carlsbad, and he estimated five hundred in 

 eastern Eddy and western Lee counties. It is largely 

 through the efforts of intelligent and public-spirited 

 ranch owners that any individuals remain, for the 

 problem of legal protection has been exceedingly diffi- 

 cult on these wide, open areas where the antelope once 

 roamed in untold numbers. Legal and official aid 

 alone can never save them, but local interest and 

 vigorous action on the part of the residents can do much 

 to postpone and possibly prevent the national disgrace 

 of allowing this unique species, one of our most interest- 

 ing game animals, to be exterminated. 



The pronghorn is not a true antelope, but belongs to 

 a family of its own, peculiar to North America and 

 characterized by deciduous horns with a single flat- 

 tened prong at one side. 



MERRIAM ELK; ARIZONA WAPITI 



Cervus canadensis merriami 



The Merriam elk are gone from the Guadalupe and 

 Sacramento mountains, where they were once abun- 

 dant and from which area they may well have moved 

 in winter down to the Mescalero Cave level. At any 

 rate they were within an easy day's hunting trip from 

 the cave and undoubtedly afforded one of the important 

 sources of game and food supply for the local aborigines. 



A set of horns of this elk, picked up near the head of 



