OF THE LARGE AMERICAN MAMMALS 213 
sibly two hundred sheep, and Washington has only what 
chemists call ‘‘a trace.” It has recently been discovered that 
California still contains a few sheep, and in southwestern 
Nevada there are a few more. 
In Utah the big-horn species is probably quite extinct. 
In Arizona there are a few very small bands, very widely 
scattered. They are in the Santa Catalina Mountains, the 
Grand Canyon country, the Gila Range, and the Quitova- 
quita Mountains, near Sonoyta. But who can protect from 
slaughter those Arizona sheep? Absolutely no one! They 
are too few and too widely scattered for the game wardens 
to keep in touch with them. The “prospectors” have them 
entirely at their mercy, and the world well knows what 
prospectors’ “mercy” to edible big game looks like on the 
ground. It leads straight to the frying-pan, the coyotes and 
the vultures. 
The Lower California peninsula contains about five hun- 
dred mountain sheep, without the slightest protection save 
low, desert mountains, heat and thirst. But that is no real 
protection whatever. Those sheep are too fine to be butchered 
the way they have been, and now are being, butchered. In 
1908 I strongly called the attention of the Mexican Govern- 
ment to the situation; and the Departmento de Fomento se- 
cured the issue of an executive order forbidding the hunting 
of any big game in Lower California without the written 
authority of the Government. I am sure, however, that, 
owing to the political and military upheaval, the Government 
never stopped the slaughter of sheep. In such easy moun- 
tains as those of Lower California, it is a simple matter to 
