52 



POPULAR OFFICIAL GUIDE. 



AMERICAN PRONG HORNED ANTELOPE. 



species to become extinct, and if we may judge by the 

 rate at which the bands have been disappearing during the 

 last fifteen years, ten years more will, in all probability, wit- 

 ness the extermination of the last individuals now struggling 

 to exist outside of rigidly protected areas. It was the inten- 

 tion of the Society to make liberal provision for the study of 

 the species while it is yet possible to obtain living specimens, 

 for fifty years hence our graceful and zoologically interest- 

 ing Prong-Horn will be as extinct as the dodo. Unfortu- 

 nately, however, it fares so badly on the Atlantic coast, 

 there will, no doubt, be periods wherein this species will be 

 temporarily absent from the Park. 



Forty years ago this animal inhabited practically the 

 whole of the great pasture region which stretches eastward 

 from the Rocky Mountains to the western borders of Iowa 

 and Missouri. Northward its range extended far into Mani- 

 toba ; southward it went far beyond the Rio Grande, and it 

 also' ranged southwestward through Colorado and Nevada 

 to southern California. Its chosen home was the treeless 

 plains, where the rich buffalo grass and bunch grass 

 afforded abundant food, but it also frequented the beau- 

 tiful mountain parks of Wyoming and Colorado. It even 

 lived contentedly in the deserts of the southwest, where its 

 voluntary presence, coupled with the absence of water, con- 

 stituted a problem which has puzzled the brain of many 

 a desert traveller. 



