28 HOOFED ANIMALS 



Rocky Mountains almost to the shore of the Arctic Ocean, 

 and throughout one-half of Alaska, a range fully 3,600 miles 

 long. The accompanying map shows actual occurrences of 

 the various species during the past twenty years. 



Of our seven species, four are so interesting they deserve 

 separate notice. 



THE BIG-HORN, or ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP, 1 has been 

 known for one hundred and ten years, and it is the species 

 which is most widely known in America. Once quite abun- 

 dant throughout the Rocky Mountains from Mexico to Lati- 

 tude 57 in northern British Columbia, it has been so per- 

 sistently hunted and slain that now it exists only in small 

 bands, in widely separated localities. In all of our western 

 states save Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington, the 

 killing of Mountain Sheep is now prohibited for a term of 

 years, and it is hoped that these laws will be enforced and 

 respected. Wherever they are ignored, the wild sheep are 

 doomed to extinction, for the reason that the fancied legal 

 protection of female sheep is disregarded, and wherever rams 

 are killable by law the ewes disappear fully as fast as the 

 rams. Of course this spells extermination. 



The general color of the Big-Horn is gray -brown, with a 

 large white or cream-yellow patch on the hind quarters, com- 

 pletely surrounding the tail. A large ram killed by the author 

 in the Shoshone Mountains, Wyoming, on November 16, 

 1889, stood 40 inches high at the shoulders, was 58 inches in 

 length from end of nose to root of tail; its tail was 3 inches 

 long, and its weight was about 325 pounds. Although the 



1 O'vis can-a-derisis. 



