8 OUR BIG GAME 



his pages, by the sportsman who edited the work. As 

 late as 1885 Baillie-Grohman says:* "There is much 

 myth interwoven with the natural history of the white 

 goat, and but little that is authentic is known of it ;" and he 

 adds : " Of twenty-three scientific authorities who have, 

 so far as I have been able to follow the subject, written 

 on this animal, none had ever seen one alive; but they, 

 nevertheless, have bestowed thirteen generic names 

 upon it, some making of it a sheep, others calling it a 

 goat, while others again ranked it as a chamois." Since 

 Baillie-Grohman wrote this, many naturalists and 

 sportsmen have visited the white goat in his native 

 mountains. I have an excellent photograph of him 

 taken at short range,t and the editor of Recreation has 

 a number of photographic groups showing these 

 " mythical" wild animals at rest and in motion. 



Our knowledge of the big-game animals has in- 

 creased rapidly within the past few years and now 

 may be said to be fairly accurate. Much of the best 

 information about the natural history of the game, its 

 present distribution and the methods of capture, is to 

 be found in papers written for the magazines, such as 

 the excellent monographs on the antelope by Grinnell 

 in the Century and in Outing, the papers by Roosevelt 

 on the cougar in Scribners Magazine, and by Schwatka 

 on Polar Shooting, and many other recent papers by 

 sportsmen and writers of ability. The writer is under 

 obligations to these sportsmen, and has digested much 

 of this recent literature in the following pages with 

 the view to making this volume as complete, accurate 



*The Century Magazine, vol. vii., p. 193. 

 t See " In Brush, Sedge and Stubble." 



