The Mountain Sheep and its Range 



America, from the Arctic Ocean down into 

 Mexico. Wherever the country was adapted to 

 them, there they were found. Absence of suitable 

 food, and sometimes the presence of animals not 

 agreeable to them, may have left certain areas 

 without the sheep, but for the most part these ani- 

 mals no doubt existed from the eastern limit of 

 their range clear to the Pacific. There were sheep 

 on the plains and in the mountains; those inhabit- 

 ing the plains when alarmed sought shelter in the 

 rough bad lands that border so many rivers, or on 

 the tall buttes that rise from the prairies, or in the 

 small volcanic uplifts which, in the north, stretch 

 far out eastward from the Rocky Mountains. 



While some hunters believe that the wild sheep 

 were driven from their former habitat on the 

 plains and in the foothills by the advent of 

 civilized man, the opinion of the best naturalists is 

 the reverse o'f this. They believe that over the 

 whole plains country, except in a few localities 

 where they still remain, the sheep have been ex- 

 terminated, and this is probably what has hap- 

 pened. Thus Dr. C. Hart Merriam writes me : 



"I do not believe that the plains sheep have 

 been driven to the mountains at all, but that they 

 have been exterminated over the greater part of 

 their former range. In other words, that the form 



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