NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 369 



intangible factor of psychic incompatibility, for bighorns are 

 commonest where sheep are fewest. On account of the rather 

 unfavorable conditions of the area, they doubt if it will ever be 

 possible to increase the bighorn population enough to warrant 

 an open season in western Texas. 



There is little recent information at hand as to the present 

 status of the bighorn in northern Chihuahua or the adjacent 

 parts of New Mexico, beyond the fact of its evident deple- 

 tion within the past 50 years. In extreme southwestern New 

 Mexico Mearns in 1892 found them in some abundance in 

 the Dog, Big Hatchet, and San Luis Mountains. In 1900 

 sheep were brought in and sold for meat at Deming from the 

 mountains near the international boundary; but by 1908 there 

 were only a few remaining in the Big Hatchet Mountains, 

 "and probably none in the other ranges of southwestern New 

 Mexico. In the country north of Deming there seem to be no 

 recent records," nor could Goldman and Bailey at that time 

 procure any records for the Burro and Carlisle Mountains or 

 the Mogollon Mountains. In 1905 old horns were reported to 

 Hollister as found from time to time in the little ranges from 

 the Magdalenas to the Zunis, But no one could tell when the 

 animals had last lived there. 



In northern Chihuahua and the adjacent sierras of Sonora 

 these sheep were found up to a few years ago on all the ranges, 

 but now, owing to relentless hunting, and in spite of the fact 

 that these sheep are not to be killed legally, they are in danger 

 of becoming extinct. A reservation for this animal is contem- 

 plated in the Altar district of Sonora (Zinser, 1936, p. 9). 



Bighorn sheep, presumed to be of this race, formerly in- 

 habited the Chiricahua Mountains in the extreme southeastern 

 corner of Arizona but are now extinct there. In former years, 

 according to information supplied to Cahalane (1939a, p. 439), 

 a life-long resident of the mountains recalled that they were 

 "fairly numerous" in all the lava hills of the vicinity but were 

 gradually shot out, though he believed that the last remnant 

 (probably in the Rincon Mountains) succumbed to the drought 

 of 1903-5. 



During the early nineties mountain sheep were common along 

 the international boundary and the adjacent parts of Arizona. 

 Mearns (1907) writes that he saw many horns in the Papago 

 Indian settlement, and the Indians reported them common in 



