The Black-Tail Deer. H3 



and where water can be obtained without going too far 

 out of the immediate neighborhood. 



Throughout the plains country the black-tail lives in 

 the broken ground, seldom coming down to the alluvial 

 bottoms or out on the open prairies and plateaus. But 

 he is found all through this broken ground. Sometimes 

 it is rolling in character with rounded hills and gentle val- 

 leys, dotted here and there with groves of trees ; or the 

 hills may rise into high chains, covered with an open pine 

 forest, sending off long spurs and divided by deep valleys 

 and basins. Such places are favorite resorts of this deer ; 

 but it is as plentiful in the Bad Lands proper. There are 

 tracts of these which are in part or wholly of volcanic 

 origin ; then the hills are called scoria buttes. They are 

 high and very steep, but with rounded tops and edges, and 

 are covered, as is the ground round about, with scoriae 

 boulders. Bushes, and sometimes a few cedar, grow 

 among them, and though they would seem to be most un- 

 likely places for deer, yet black-tail are very fond of them, 

 and are very apt to be found among them. Often in the 

 cold fall mornings they will lie out among the boulders, on 

 the steep side of such a scoria butte, sunning themselves, far 

 from any cover except a growth of brushwood in the bottom 

 of the dry creeks or coulies. The grass on top of and 

 between these scoria buttes is often very nutritious, and 

 cattle are also fond of it. The higher buttes are choice 

 haunts of the mountain sheep. 



Nineteen twentieths of the Bad Lands, however, owe 

 their origin not to volcanic action but to erosion and to 

 the peculiar weathering forces always at work in the 



