American Big Game in its Haunts 



promises to be even 'more radical than that effected 

 by the ice. We are now beginning to see the end 

 of the North American fauna; and if we do not 

 move promptly, it will become a matter of history 

 and of museums. The bison is on the danger line; 

 if it survives the fatal effects of its natural slug- 

 gishness when abundantly fed, it still runs the 

 more insidious but equally great danger of in- 

 breeding, like the wild ox of Europe. The 

 chances for the wapiti and elk and the western mule 

 and black-tail deer are brighter, provided that we 

 move promptly for their protection. The prong- 

 hdrn is a wonderfully clever and adaptive animal, 

 crawling under barb-wire fences, and thus avoid- 

 ing one of the greatest enemies of Western life. 

 Last summer I was surprised beyond measure to 

 see the large herds of twenty to forty pronghorn 

 antelopes still surviving on the Laramie plains, 

 fenced in on all sides by the wires of the great 

 Four-Bar Ranch, part of which I beheve are 

 stretched illegally. 



RECENT DISAPPEARANCE. 



I need not dwell on the astonishingly rapid 

 diminution of our larger animals in the last few 

 years; it would be like "carrying coals to New- 

 castle" to detail personal observations before this 



358 



