329 



HAPLOCERUS-MOUTANUS. 



The Rocky Mountain Goat so closely resembles a small 

 American Bison that there is considerable difference of 

 opinion among scientists as to whether it should be 

 classed with the oxen or the goats, and it has been given 

 a separate genus. This animal will weigh as much as the 

 average Virginia deer, and measures about five feet in 

 length, and three feet in height. It has a very short 

 tail, and a dense woolly undercoat, which like the coarse 

 long outer hair, is yellowish white in color. Mountain 

 goats generally occupy grassy belts high up on the moun- 

 tains in Washington, Idaho and Montana ; but it is said 

 that in British Columbia they sometimes come so near to 

 tide water that more than one specimen has been shot 

 from a canoe. They are clumsy looking creatures, but as 

 Dr. W. T. Hornaday says: "they are the most daring 

 climbers of all of the American hoofed animals, and the 

 small, angular, compact hoofs, which are an ingenious 

 combination of rubber pad inside and knife edge outside, 

 hold them equally well on snow, ice or bare rock, so that 

 they can cross walls of rock which neither man, dog, nor 

 mountain sheep, would dare attempt to pass; and thus 

 in spite of their natural stupidity they generally escape 

 from hunters who seek to destroy them, as an evi- 

 dence of their prowess rather than for any beauty or 

 commercial value they possess. ' ' 



Dr. Hornaday believes that some of the species of our 

 North American animals were acquired by immigration 

 from the Old World. He says: "It requires no stretch 

 of the imagination to behold Bering Strait choked with 

 the great Polar ice pack, and hardy, strong-built boars, 

 wolves, mountain sheep, and reindeer crossing over the 

 sixty miles that now separate Asia from Alaska, and 

 spreading in all directions over North America. I fully 

 believe that the parent stock of our mountain sheep, 

 caribou, moose, wolves and bears came from Asia by that 

 route." Possibly the presence of the Rocky Mountain 

 Goat on this continent can be accounted for in the same 

 way. 



