62 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



Later, Ord, as ignorant as Lewis and Clark of the real range of 

 the animal, credited it to both Washington and Oregon, and he was 

 followed by Richardson (1829), J. K. Townsend (1839), Suckley and 

 Gibbs (1860) 4 Grinnell and Fannin (18&0), Hornaday (1906), and 

 even G. S. Miller in 1924. 



Goats are still common on Mount Saint Helens and the Goat Rocks 

 half way between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, and they have 

 been reported in comparatively recent times from the north slopes 

 of Mount Adams in Washington. So far as known, however, there 

 is no authentic record of their occurrence south of the Columbia 

 River in Oregon in recent years. The discovery of their bones in 

 cave deposits near Mount Shasta in northern California, by John C. 

 Merriam et al. in 1903 (Sinclair, 1904^ P- 18) is evidence that they 

 once ranged this far south, and it is not improbable that in the days 

 of Lewis and Clark they may have occupied Mount Hood and perhaps 

 other snowy peaks of the Cascades in Oregon. Hood, Jefferson, 

 Three Sisters, and several other peaks of the range are perfectly 

 adapted to mountain goats ; and the fact that before the introduction 

 of domestic sheep, they were the only animals except dogs with warm 

 woolly fleeces, may well account for a receding range in a region well 

 occupied by a primitive native people. Now their fine woolly fleeces 

 are in less demand, and they might easily be protected on the higher 

 peaks of Oregon where they would form a most interesting and 

 attractive feature of wildlife. 



A record of mountain goats occupying the Blue Mountains, 

 made by Lee R. Dice, cannot be ignored, although it seems very 

 doubtful. He says : "Goats are reported by Floyd Kendall [Forest 

 Ranger on the Imnaha] to have occurred at one time in the Blue 

 Mountains of Washington but they are now absent from the region " 

 (1919 , p.%1). On the Washington end of the Blue Mountains there 

 is no suitable country for goats, but in the high peaks of the 

 Wallowas, the southern section of the Blue Mountains in Oregon, 

 they would find ideal range and might well thrive if once established. 

 They have also been reported from the Seven Devils Mountains of 

 Idaho, just across the Snake River Canyon from the Blue Mountains, 

 but this, too, is a doubtful record as the animals are now not posi- 

 tively known nearer than the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho. 

 Still there is the possibility that in earlier times they may have 

 occupied the high peaks of both the Seven Devils and the Wallowas. 

 Further evidence on this point should be sought. 



If mountain goats ever ranged in this corner of Oregon it would 

 naturally be the Montana form, Oreamnas americanus missoulae 

 (Allen), described from the mountains north of Missoula and rang- 

 ing througout the Bitterroots and mountains of central Idaho. 



So often have the female or young male mountain sheep with 

 slender, curved horns been mistaken for mountain goats during the 

 spring season, when the faded winter coats at a distance appear 

 almost white, that goat records must be fully verified to be reliable. 

 While many such records appear in literature of mountain goats 

 south to the borders of Mexico, the present range of the species is 

 known to reach south in the Rocky Mountains only to central Idaho 

 and in the Cascades to southern Washington.] 



