790 TEXTBOOK OF ZOOLOGY 



horned antelope, considered by Seton to have occupied a primitive 

 range of approximately 2,000,000 square miles, or 1,280,000,000 acres, 

 is now represented by scattered remnants only. 



The wild turkey, a strictly North American product, once occurred 

 generally throughout the wooded sections of the eastern, southern, 

 and southwestern United States, as well as in Mexico. Now it is gone 

 from many of its former homes and its future is decidedly uncertain 

 unless there is marked change in its treatment by man. 



Conservationists are becoming much concerned about the prairie 

 chickens. Formerly represented in the Northeast by the now 

 extinct heath hen, and at present in the northern Great Plains 

 area and the Middle West by the greater prairie chicken, on 

 the southern plains by the lesser species, and on the Gulf Coast by 

 the Attwater prairie chicken, these birds are worthy of real attention. 

 Handsome and grouselike birds, weighing up to one and a half pounds 

 and exhibiting some of the most interesting courting habits known 

 among American game birds, the loss of any of them is a real calamity. 

 The heath hen has become extinct in recent years. The greater and 

 lesser prairie chickens are much reduced. They have been so crowded 

 out by field-crop agriculture and cut down by drought, overgrazing, 

 and too much shooting, that their status is not encouraging in any 

 part of their range. The Attwater prairie chicken, which formerly 

 occurred on the Gulf coastal prairie from Louisiana westward into 

 Texas and south to a point beyond Corpus Christi, has been all but 

 eliminated. It is gone from more than 90 per cent of its former range, 

 and is probably in worse condition than any other of the still existing 

 forms. 



The jaguar, el tigre of the Mexicans, really an American leopard 

 and justly entitled to protection as an object of sport wherever it would 

 not interfere too much with livestock, formerly ranged north in 

 Arizona occasionally to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and was 

 found widely throughout Texas. Of recent years there are few au- 

 thentic records of its occurrence in the United States, though the 

 species is seemingly quite abundant still in parts of Mexico. This is 

 likewise true of the ocelot or leopard cat. Now within the United 

 States it is restricted to a limited locality in the brush country of 

 southern Texas. Likewise, the puma is becoming greatly reduced 

 and restricted. 



