OF THE LARGE AMERICAN MAMMALS 217 



point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six con- 

 tours below "old ram" heads, in desirability. Furthermore, 

 most guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for 

 use as food, and far inferior to that of the big-horn. These 

 reasons, taken together, render the goats much less perse- 

 cuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and prospectors who 

 enter the home of the two species. It was because of this 

 indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips 

 and his party saw two hundred and forty -three goats in thirty 

 days in Goat Mountain Park and only fourteen sheep. 



Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners 

 change very considerably, the coast mountains of the great 

 northwestern wilderness will remain stocked with wild moun- 

 tain goats until long after the last big-horn has been shot to 

 death. Fortunately, the skin of the mountain goat has no 

 commercial value. I think it was in 1887 that I purchased, 

 in Denver, one hundred and fifty nicely tanned skins of our 

 wild white goat at fifty cents each! They were needed for the 

 first exhibit ever made to illustrate the extermination of 

 American large mammals, and they were shown at the 

 Louisville Exposition. It must have cost the price of those 

 skins to tan them; and I was pleased to know that some 

 one lost money on the venture. 



At present the mountain goat extends from northwestern 

 Montana to the head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in 

 the interior or in the Yukon Valley. Whenever man decides 

 that the species has lived long enough, he can quickly and 

 easily exterminate it. It is one of the most picturesque and 

 interesting wild animals on this continent, and there is not 



