Climbing for White Goats 



yet since altitude often answers for lati- 

 tude, so we sometimes find it far to the 

 south of its usual range ; for example, 

 on Mount Whitney, in California, where 

 goats are abundant, though none of their 

 kind can be found for hundreds of miles 

 to the north. Like certain Alpine but- 

 terflies, which occur each summer on 

 Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, 

 and are not found elsewhere south of 

 Labrador, so on some isolated mountain- 

 tops the goat has been cut off from the 

 rest of his race, and still persists in little 

 colonies living alone. 



The goat likes regions of great precipi- 

 tation, and is most abundant in the high 

 mountains where much snow or rain falls. 

 This explains its absence from the south- 

 ern portion of the continental backbone. 

 Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico 

 have many peaks high enough to give it 

 the temperature which it requires ; but it 

 is not found in those regions because of 

 their aridity. The goat occurs abundantly 

 in northwestern Montana, Idaho, Oregon, 

 and Washington, and all through the 

 mountain ranges of the British posses- 

 sions and Alaska, north toward the Arctic 

 Ocean, where the mountains become 

 lower and sink down to meet the sea- 



