26 WILD ANIMALS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. 



were among the last hunting" grounds in the United States from which, 

 about the year 1884, this noble game animal vanished. In 1895 buffalo 

 bones were thickly strewn over the prairies along the eastern edge of 

 the park, although they had been gathered up everywhere within a 

 day's drive of the railroad and shii)ped away for commercial fertilizer. 

 They were numerous on the edge of the prairie at the lower end of 

 St. Mary Lake, and skeletons were found in all the little open prairie 

 strips Avell back into the timber along the sides of the lake. In 1917 

 few bones were to be seen, but old skulls are still picked up in the 

 thickets and among the rocks well back into the narrow valleys and 

 edge of the timber of the eastern border of the park, and many of 

 these may be seen at the park hotels and chalets, at ranger stations, 

 and ranches along the border. In the timber just west of McDermott 

 Lake on the Swiftcurrent Creek in 1917 1 found a half-buriecl skeleton 

 in the humus of the pine woods and picked out an almost perfect ver- 

 tebra with a 14-inch dorsal process, which once helped to support the 

 high shoulder hump of an old bull. At the ranger station on Belly 

 River, just inside the park line, two skulls were seen in a fair state of 

 preservation, and numerous grassed-over trails leading from the steep 

 slopes of the benches to the river bottoms showed Avhere the buffalo 

 had at one time occupied this valley in great numbers. At the ranger 

 station on the North Fork of Kennedy Creek was a fairly good skull 

 with two old horns that had been picked up in that vicinity. At 

 Waterton Lake a good buffalo skull adorned the front of the ranger 

 station just inside the park line, and at the north end of the lake under 

 our camp woodpile I uncovered an old skeleton of a bull bison. There 

 are no live buffalo in the park at present, but some ideal sections of 

 their original range could be inclosed, where a few of these animals 

 could thrive the year around with little or no care or expense, and add 

 one more to the many attractive features of the park. The climate 

 is less severe than that where the wild herd now winters at 8,000 feet 

 altitude in the Yellowstone Park, and the conditions would be more 

 favorable for an all-year range. 



Mountain Sheep; Bighorn: Ovis canadensis canudensis Shaw. — 

 Mountain sheep are abundant on practically all the high, rugged 

 ranges throughout Glacier Park, especially on the rocky slopes above 

 Tw^o Medicine Lakes and around Chief and Gable Mountains. In 

 summer they scatter out over the high and more inaccessible ridges 

 above timberline and are less conspicuous than the white goats, but 

 during the winter they come down on the lower slopes and, espe- 

 ciallj?^ in spring and early summer, are much in evidence along 

 the roads and trails in the more accessible parts of the park. 

 Park Ranger W. S. Gibb counted 207 sheep in March. 1917, on 

 the slopes near Many Glacier and photographed them at close quar- 



