THE BIG-HORN 207 



is one of the best of them, and is said to resemble the 

 argali of Asia. 



Mr. Stone regards the mountain-sheep of America 

 as the handsomest of our wild animals. They are, he 

 says, the most perfect combination of strength, hardi- 

 hood, endurance, agility, beauty and grace. They are 

 most delicate in their tastes. Their home is most 

 picturesque and their food the daintiest. They are 

 timid in the presence of their enemies, but courageous 

 in battling with the many forbidding elements to which 

 their lives in the high mountains are exposed. They 

 range through the greatest depth of latitude of any 

 family of the ruminants on the continent and are 

 instinctively wild. No wild animals are further 

 removed from domestication; they find the most 

 congenial home in the pure air of the wildest moun- 

 tain countries, and so far all efforts to transplant and 

 domesticate them have been failures. 



As animals for the game-preserve they would, there- 

 fore, certainly prove to be a failure, unless, of course, the 

 preserve be created to include some of their native 

 mountains in the West. Here again I invite the atten- 

 tion of Western sportsmen to their opportunity to 

 establish parks where the grounds are of little or no 

 value and where they may preserve for their shooting 

 one of the best, if not the best, American game animal, 

 and, at the same time, have the satisfaction of saving 

 it from destruction.* 



The time to establish a game-preserve is while the 



* A New York club has saved the deer on Lonjj Island and now has 

 hundreds of these animals in an unfenced preserve within fifty miles of the 

 city. See note to chapter on the Virginia deer. 



