232 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



overtake a Mule-deer on the level, but fail utterly when it came 

 to a buck Antelope. These same dogs could catch a Coyote 

 in a very short race. 



Captain R. B. Marcy says: ^^ **We have had several good 

 opportunities since we have been upon the plains of witnessing 

 the relative speed of the different animals found here, and our 

 observations have confirmed the opinion I have before 

 advanced. For example, the greyhounds have, upon several 

 different occasions, run down and captured the Deer and the 

 Prairie-rabbits, which are also considered very fleet; but 

 although they have had very many races with the Antelope 

 under favourable circumstances, yet they have never, in one 

 instance, been able to overtake them; on the contrary, the 

 longer the chase has continued the greater has been the dis- 

 tance between them. The Cervus virginianus (our Red-deer) 

 has generally been considered the fleetest animal upon the 

 continent after the horse, but the Antilocapra americana, or 

 Pronghorned Antelope of the plains, is very much swifter." 



Greyhounds have doubtless caught many Antelope in 

 open chase, but one greyhound cannot catch a full-grown, 

 unwounded buck Antelope by fair running.^^ As Governor 

 St. John, of Kansas, said to Buffalo Jones after much experi- 

 ence, "It takes a mighty good greyhound to catch a mighty 

 poor Antelope."" 



I have often heard railroad men tell of races between 

 trains and Antelope. When running at the ordinary rate of 

 25 or 30 miles an hour the engine could not pass these fleet 

 coursers, but when the engineers put on all speed, so as to run at 

 a 35-mile rate, the train forged ahead — and in a mile or so the 

 Antelope turned aside and gave it up, disgusted to find that at 

 last there was something on the plains that could outrun them. 



'^Exped. Red River, 1854, p. 62. 



^* Since this was written Dr. G. B. Grinnell tells me that in 1873 "Gibbon," a phe- 

 nomenal greyhound belonging to General Stanley, did on 22 occasions, in fair race, catch 

 unwounded Antelope, some of which were bucks. And Colonel W. P. Evans, nth Inf. 

 U. S. A., writes me, November 28, 1907, that Colonel Gardiner had a bitch greyhound, 

 which he saw catch a fine buck Antelope in 1878, near Fort Dodge, Kan. She had 

 several others to her credit, but was undoubtedly a very unusual hound. 



^^ Buff. Jones Advt., 1899, p. 194. 



