OF THE LARGE AMERICAN MAMMALS Q17 
point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six con- 
tours below ‘“‘old ram”’ heads, in desirability. Furthermore, 
most guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for 
use as food, and far inferior to that of the big-horn. These 
reasons, taken together, render the goats much less perse- 
cuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and prospectors who 
enter the home of the two species. It was because of this 
indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips 
and his party saw two hundred and forty-three goats in thirty 
days in Goat Mountain Park and only fourteen sheep. 
Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners 
change very considerably, the coast mountains of the great 
northwestern wilderness will remain stocked with wild moun- 
tain goats until long after the last big-horn has been shot to 
death. Fortunately, the skin of the mountain goat has no 
commercial value. I think it was in 1887 that I purchased, 
in Denver, one hundred and fifty nicely tanned skins of our 
wild white goat at fifty cents each! They were needed for the 
first exhibit ever made to illustrate the extermination of 
American large mammals, and they were shown at the 
Louisville Exposition. It must have cost the price of those 
skins to tan them; and I was pleased to know that some 
one lost money on the venture. 
At present the mountain goat extends from northwestern 
Montana to the head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in 
the interior or in the Yukon Valley. Whenever man decides 
that the species has lived long enough, he can quickly and 
easily exterminate it. It is one of the most picturesque and 
interesting wild animals on this continent, and there is not 
