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. 
Tue Bic-Horn, or Rocky Mountain SHEEP, 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 Q'vis can-a-den'sis. 
