NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 273 



In the Mimbres Range Bailey was unable to find any tradition 

 of elk, nor in the Datil Mountains could Hollister in 1905 find 

 any ranchers who remembered seeing them, although old 

 antlers were occasionally discovered. A similar story of traces 

 of their former presence was told in the Bear Spring and Indian 

 Spring Mountains, which probably once formed the northern 

 boundary of this elk's range. In the Sacramento Mountains 

 elk were said to have been killed up to 1898, but Bailey him- 

 self, in 1902, could get no record of elk killed or even seen 

 there later than 1893. 



Concerning these elk in the White Mountain region of 

 Arizona, Nelson (1902) wrote that their main range covered an 

 area about 30 by 50 miles in extent, at an elevation 8,000 to 

 10,000 feet above sea level. At that time, between 1885 and 

 1888, "elk were far from numerous" but seemed to be most 

 often found "about some beautiful damp meadows in the 

 midst of the dense fir forest on the rolling summit of the 

 Prieto Plateau, between the Blue and the Black Rivers." 

 W. W. Price, who collected in this region in 1894, saw several 

 and shot a male at 9,000 feet elevation. The report of tracks 

 seen here in 1901 by a local httnter, who followed them un- 

 successfully for two days, indicates that a few survived until 

 that time, perhaps till about 1904, as previously noted. The 

 fact that this survivor was trailed for two days shows that elk 

 were still hunted in spite of legal prohibition. 



In the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona 

 these elk in early times were numerous, but with the extension 

 of grazing interests in the latter part of the last century there 

 came "a long slow reduction in numbers due chiefly to the 

 elks' inability to compete with cattle on the over-grazed range." 

 Hunting accomplished their final extermination in the region, 

 for the last small band was killed in the vicinity of Fly and 

 Chiricahua Peaks about 1906 (Cahalane, 1939a). 



DWARF ELK; CALIFORNIA WAPITI; TULE ELK 



CERVUS CANADENSIS NANNODES Merriam 



Cervus nannodes Merriam, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. 18, p. 23, Feb. 2, 1905 



(" Buttonwillow, Kern County, California"). 

 FIG.: Merriam, 1905, p. 23, fig. (from photograph of a male). 



Although called "dwarf elk," this race of southern Cali- 



