104 CAMP-FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 



comes to me directly from Mr. Dunham, and his stand- 

 ing fairly compels belief. Between the Little Missouri 

 and the Rockies the great plains are broken by only a 

 few small and widely separated groups of mountains, all 

 of which rise like islands out of a sea. Mr. George Bird 

 Grinnell once received a report of goats having been 

 killed by Indians in the Little Snowy mountains, a group 

 well out on the Montana plains. 



The map accompanying these notes shows only actual 

 occurrences of Oreamnos during the past fifteen years. 

 Along the Coast of British Columbia and Alaska, and 

 the Stickine and Skeena Rivers, the occurrences reported 

 were so numerous that the lines are really continuous. 

 Beyond doubt, the goat occurs in many localities not 

 marked on the map; but it seems best to be exact, and 

 stop short of uncertainties. 



We endeavored to learn something regarding the 

 food habits of the goat as displayed on the mountain 

 summits of south-eastern British Columbia. To this end, 

 I took a sample of the contents of the stomach of my 

 first goat, panned it out, and permanently preserved a 

 series of specimens. 



First of all, we found that on those mountains, in Sep- 

 tember, Oreamnos is not a grazing animal. Of grass we 

 found only a few blades. It would seem however, that this 

 was due to an autumn caprice, for surely in other seasons, 

 and in other localities, this animal must feed upon grass. 



The stomach contained no woody fibre, and nothing 

 to indicate a browsing habit, save a few leaves of the 

 yellow willow, which grows in the sunshine of open val- 



