244 ^'EW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



hi,yh up in the mountains and in close contact with the cliffs 

 where the goat lives, together with a copious supply of water. 

 At all events the conditions are certainly favorable. North of 

 Skagway goat do not extend inland much beyond the summit of 

 the coast range, and do not again occur until the main Rockies 

 are reached, hundreds of miles to the east. The goat in these 

 eastern mountains are, in all likelihood, sju^cifically distinct from 

 the coast goat, as practically all the other mamiuals of these two 

 distinct faunal areas are separate species. 



LEGEM )AKV 1 )IS1K11'.UT10X. 



The writer has carefully traced out the legends regarding the 

 occurrence of goat in Colorado, Utah, and California. There 

 are persistent stories about the existence of white goat in Colo- 

 rado, which, when investigated seem to have their origin in some 

 domestic goat which are known to have escaped from captivity. 

 It is, however, a certainty that Oreaninos has not existed in 

 Colorado since the arrival of the white man, and there is no 

 proof of its previous existence there. This statement is made 

 after a full examination of the evidence. 



The purpose of this paper has been to gather and summarize the 

 known facts about this interesting animal and it has been neces- 

 sarv to discard a large amount of data contained in the literature 

 of the subject. Statements by certain writers regarding the ex- 

 istence of the goat in Wyoming-, Colorado, California, and even 

 New Mexico, are extremely misleading. It is positively known 

 that no goat have ever existed on Mt. Shasta, although this 

 mountain has been a favorite locality for stories about mountain 

 goat and the mythical ibex. The origin of these fables is easily 

 traced to the former existence on Mt. Shasta of mountain 

 sheep, the horns and bones of which are still occasionally found 

 there. The straight horns of the mountain sheep ewe arc proba- 

 bly responsible for most of these legends. It is bad enough to 

 suggest the occurrence of goat on Mt. Shasta, but it is utterly 

 absurd to assert their existence on .Ml. Whitney, 300 miles 

 farther south, and it is still worse to include in the range of the 

 goat New Mexico or the barren coast mountains of southern 

 California.* 



The above examples will suffice to show the loose manner in 



*St.-c ".Sport and Life in Western .America and Britisli Columhia," In' A. \V. 

 Bailli -Grohman, page 117, London, 1900, and " The Wilderm .ss Hunter," page 

 130, by Theodore Roosevelt. 



