NINTH ANNUAL REPORT. 13 



Probably the only place where the goat exists to-day in the 

 State of Oregon is the mountains in Wallowa County, in the 

 extreme northeast corner of the State, and the animals from that 

 locality are probably to be referred to O.m.tnissoulce. They have 

 long since vanished from Mt. Hood and from the other peaks in 

 the western part of the State, where they once abounded. In the 

 State of Washington they exist in reduced numbers from the 

 Canadian boundary as far south as Mt. Adams, although at 

 the latter point they are possibly now extinct. Throughout the 

 State the frequency of names, such as "goat rocks," "goat paths," 

 "goat buttes" and "goat creeks," testify to their early abundance, 

 and they were formerly shot from the decks of steamers on Lake 

 Chelan by hunters who took a wanton delight in seeing the 

 wounded animals fall down the precipitous banks. 



In the Mt. Rainier Forest Reserve they are found in small 

 numbers. In the isolated volcanic peaks along the coast the goat 

 is too easily reached to be allowed to survive, and it is probable 

 that before many years the interesting animal will be entirely 

 exterminated in the United States except in the main Rockies. 



The Alaskan form, at the extreme western limit of the genus, 

 in the neighborhood of the Mt. St. Elias Alps and the Cop- 

 per River, was described by Dr. D. G. Elliot, in 1900, as a sec- 

 ond and valid species, under the name of Oreamnos kennedyi. 

 It is strongly characterized by the lyrate shape of the horns and 

 certain anatomical features. 



These two were the only described forms, until 1904, when 

 the attention of Dr. J. A. Allen, of the American Museum of 

 Natural History, was called by the writer to the great difference 

 in bulk of body and size of horns of the goat of British Colum- 

 bia, and those of the Bitter Root Mountains in Montana. Upon 

 comparing a number of specimens from the Cascade Mountains, 

 the type locality of Oreamnos montanus, from the Bitter Root 

 Mountains of Montana and Idaho, from the main Rockies in 

 southern British Columbia and from the Schesley Mountains of 

 northern British Columbia, it was found that all these specimens 

 could be divided into three easily distinguishable groups each of 

 subspecific rank. 



The skulls of animals killed in the Schesley Mountains by 

 Andrew J. Stone in 1903, were found to be in all respects iden- 

 tical with those killed by the writer and Mr. Charles Arthur 

 Moore, Jr., in the main Rockies, near the Columbia River the 

 following year. Animals from these districts were character- 

 ized by great bulk and by a long and relatively narrow skull. 



