1 86 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



the eyes of the settlers, they bear some resemblance. In 

 South America the Spaniards, for instance, christened 

 "lion" and "tiger" the great cats which are properly 

 known as cougar and jaguar. In South Africa the Dutch 

 settlers, who came from a land where all big game had 

 long been exterminated, gave fairly grotesque names to 

 the great antelopes, calling them after the European elk, 

 stag, and chamois. The French did but little better in 

 Canada. Even in Ceylon the English, although belong- 

 ing for the most part to the educated classes, did no better 

 than the ordinary pioneer settlers, miscalling the sambur 

 stag an elk, and the leopard a cheetah. Our own pioneers 

 behaved in the same way. Hence it is that we have no 

 distinctive name at all for the group of peculiarly Ameri- 

 can game birds of which the bobwhite is the typical rep- 

 resentative; and that, when we could not use the words 

 quail, partridge, or pheasant, we went for our termi- 

 nology to the barn-yard, and called our fine grouse, fool- 

 hens, sage-hens, and prairie-chickens. The bear and wolf 

 our people recognized at once. The bison they called a 

 buffalo, which was no worse than the way in which in 

 Europe the Old World bison was called an aurochs. 

 The American true elk and reindeer were rechristened 

 moose and caribou excellent names, by the way, de- 

 rived from the Indian. The huge stag was called an elk. 

 The extraordinary antelope of the high Western peaks 

 was christened the white goat; not unnaturally, as it has 

 a most goatlike look. The prongbuck of the plains, an 

 animal standing entirely alone among ruminants, was 

 simply called antelope. Even when we invented names 



