The Antelope-Goat of the Pacific Slope. 1 19 



and February, and he has known of goats being killed within a few 

 hundred yards of the sea level, and to be captured while actually 

 swimming wide stretches of salt water. He, himself, on one occasion 

 bagged three goats and got back to his canoe within an hour from 

 the time of starting. The interminable heavy rain and squalls 

 make hunting along the inlets at this season a somewhat disagree- 

 able sport. 



Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, in the " Encyclopaedia of Sport," when 

 speaking of the chase of this beast, says that " there is no game 

 animal in America the pursuit of which entails such severe toil," 

 and this is certainly very true, except along the coast of British 

 Columbia. 



No animal leaves upon the mind of the observer the impression 

 of greater stubbornness than does the Haplocerus. One great 

 peculiarity of its structure is the remarkable shortness of the 

 metacarpal bones, which, in the case of the skeleton of an adult 

 specimen presented by Sir Edmund Locl^r to the Natural History 

 Museum (see "P. Z. S ," 1889, p. 59), measure only about 4in. in 

 length. To this fact reference is also made in Sir J. Richardson's 

 "Zoology of the Voyage of the Herald" (1854), It no doubt 

 explains the animal's peculiar gait, which, on a level rarely exceeds 

 a sort of fast walk, be the danger ever so threatening. 



Extremely little is known about the rutting season of this 

 animal, on account of the great difficulty of reaching its elevated 

 dwelling-places in the depth of winter. The few Indian tribes 

 that formerly made a practice of hunting these animals syste- 

 matically, aver that they rut in December, and this coincides with 

 'my experiences. I have had these animals under my observation, 

 at various times and places, in every month between May and 

 November; and with the exception of once noticing, in the latter 

 month (in the Flathead country), a butting match between large 

 adults, I have never perceived any signs of the rut. Mr. Geo. B. 

 Grinnell, one of the most experienced observers of this quaint 

 denizen of the Pacific Slope mountain ranges, also considers that 

 the rut occurs in December. The young are born in the latter 



