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. 
