64 



several well preserved skulls on the marshes just north of Salt Lake 

 City, which had been exposed in throwing up the earth for the railroad 

 bed. It is stated that as late as 183G, large numbers of buffalo existed 

 in this valley, but that a winter of remarkable severity immediately 

 following, when the snow is said to have fallen to an average depth 

 of ten feet, nearly exterminated them, and that the few that survived 

 soon after disappeared. They seem also to have formerly extended 

 much to the westward of the Great Salt Lake Valley, Mr. Mecham 

 assuring me that he has not only seen their skulls bleaching on the 

 plains to the westward, but also on the eastern slope of the Sierra 

 Nevada Mountains, on the so-called Hastings trail. I have also re- 

 ceived substantially the same report from others, these accounts being 

 wholly independent and from persons unknown to each other. They 

 have, however, scarcely been seen west of the Green River for thirty 

 years. 



Mr. Mecham, alluding to his experience with the buffalo, says he 

 saw "millions "of them on the Laramie Plains in 1846. When the 

 emigrants began to cross these plains they slaughtered the buffalo 

 recklessly, killing thousands for which they had no use. This whole- 

 sale butchery alarmed the Indians for the fate of these, to them, in- 

 dispensable animals, and to save them from destruction and perhaps 

 to annoy the whites, they drove them away from the regular emigrant 

 trail, endeavoring to keep them as much as possible out of the reach 

 of the emigrants. But this precaution seems to have availed little, as 

 they continued to decrease rapidly in numbers. A few still straggle 

 to the northern edge of these plains, from their range farther north, 

 but over vast areas in Wyoming and Nebraska, where twenty to 

 twenty-five years ago they existed in abundance, they have now be- 

 come wholly extinct. 



lO. Oris moiltana. Rocky Mountain Sheep. Found here 

 and there in the Wahsatch Range, but are rapidly decreasing in 

 numbers. 



The Rocky Mountain Goat (Aplocerus montanus) occurs about two 

 hundred miles north of Ogden, whence specimens have been received 

 at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, collected by Mr. Mecham. 

 This is the most southerly point of their occurrence known to Mr. 

 Mecham. 



Amikm 4 1-1111(1. 



12. 4 ntilocapra Americana. Pronghorn. "Antelope." 

 Occurs about forty miles west of Ogden, and was formerly more or 

 less numerous throughout the Valley. Captain Stansbury, in his Ex- 

 pedition to the Great Salt Lake, speaks of finding them on Antelope 

 and Stansbury Islands, during his survey of the lake in 1850. 



