MAMMALS OP THE MEXICAN BOUNDAEY. 201 



into every nook and cranny of the rooms. On seeing a dog, they 

 ptopped short, standing like statues^ eyeing it intently. Their gait 

 ■was always extremely graceful, whether trotting or bounding along 

 at a run. They liked to rub their heads against those whom they 

 knew well, and to climb up upon them as a dog does when asking to 

 be petted ; but they would butt and kick vigorously if strangers 

 tried to pick them up or to carry them. Their voice was singular. 

 When deserted by their friends they bleated quite loudly and looked 

 for them in all directions. At first they made a low sound, like the 

 squeak of a rat, that gradually increased in volume until it could 

 fairly be called a bleat. When sleeping in the pine forest near 

 Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1886, my " campaign " hat was pushed from 

 my face early one morning and I beheld a large buck standing 

 beside me. It was a tame mule deer that ranged at will about the 

 town of Flagstaff. 



In 1892, when the main supply camp of the International Bounda- 

 dary Commission was located at White Water, Chihuahua, the water- 

 ing place of a herd of mule deer, a buck came and drank its fill from 

 the cook's water barrel, under a tent fly, in the midst of the large 

 camp one morning at daybreak. 



The Mexican cougar or mountain lion {Felis oregonensis aztecus) 

 destroys great numbers of deer, and it is not uncommon to find the 

 remains of deer that have been recently slain by it and hidden in 

 caves or among shrubbery and rocks. In 1855, I found a large male 

 mule deer that had been killed but a few hours before by a cougar. 

 There were evidences of a severe struggle, which showed that the 

 cougar — perhaps a small one — had encountered difficulties in the un- 

 dertaking. On December 11, 1885, 1 found a deserted den of bears in 

 a cave on Clear Creek. In it were many broken bones of deer and the 

 fresh tracks of a cougar. 



In the autumn of 1885 Messrs. Edward and Frank Jordan found 

 a fat doe that had been killed by a cougar and covered with brush 

 near their mining claim on Squaw Peak, one of the Verde Mountains. 



Coyotes and other wolves follow the mule deer and drag down 

 those that have been disabled by wounds or sickness; but they do 

 much greater damage by destroying newly-born fawns that have been 

 left hidden by their mothers. On several occasions I saw golden 

 eagles, always in pairs, following herds of does and fawns; but I 

 never saw them make an attack upon the deer, although I felt certain 

 that they were following them with that object. 



I have known but one case of the death of a mule deer from acci- 

 dent. On the wagon road from Fort Verde to Flagstaff, Arizona, on 

 a high, juniper-clad mesa, I looked into a wonderful cave, in lime 

 rock, beneath a layer of volcanic scoria, and could discern the horns 



