50 HOOFED ANIMALS 
found in no other animal, that zoologists have created for it 
a separate Family, which it occupies in solitary state. It 
is like an island in a vast sea, unrelated. Let him who here- 
after may be tempted, either lawfully or unlawfully, to raise 
a death-dealing rifle against one of these beautiful prairie 
rovers, remember two things before he pulls the trigger: In 
this land of plenty, no man really needs this creature’s paltry 
pounds of flesh; and if his two-cent bullet flies true to the 
mark, it will destroy an animal more wonderful than the 
rarest orchid that ever bloomed. 
Remember the ages which Nature has spent in fashioning 
this wonderful combination of keen eye, fleet foot and grace- 
ful limb, and in preserving it from the extermination which 
overtook the great reptiles, rhinoceroses and toothed birds 
of the vast inland sea now known as the Uintah Basin. Surely 
this animal is worth perpetual protection at our hands, rather 
than needless, cruel and inexcusable slaughter. It cannot be 
perpetuated by breeding in captivity; and unless preserved in 
a wild state, it will become extinct. 
Behold the list of characters in which this animal differs 
from all other antelopes: Although its horns grow over a 
bony core, they are shed and renewed every year; the horn 
bears a prong, and is placed directly over the eye; the feet 
have no “dew-claws’’; the hair consists of a hollow tube filled 
with pith,—coarse, harsh, straw-like and easily broken; and 
all the hair on the rump is fully erectile, like the bristles of 
swine. When fighting, or alarmed, this white hair is instantly 
thrown up, and on a fleeing animal it forms a dangerously 
conspicuous and inviting mark. To my mind, the white 
