20 
NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
high up in the mountains and in close contact with the cliffs 
where the goat lives, together with a copious supply of water. 
At all events the conditions are certainly favorable. North of 
Skagway goat do not extend inland much beyond the summit of 
the coast range, and do not again occur until the main Rockies 
are reached, hundreds of miles to the east. The goat in these 
eastern ‘mountains are, in all likelihood, specifically distinct from 
the coast goat, as practically all the other mammals of these two 
distinct faunal areas are separate species. 
LEGENDARY DISTRIBUTION. 
The writer has carefully traced out the legends regarding the 
occurrence of goat in Colorado, Utah, and California. There 
are persistent stories about the existence of white goat in Colo- 
rado, which, when investigated seem to have their origin in some 
domestic goat which are known to have escaped from captivity. 
It is, however, a certainty that Orearnnos has not existed in 
Colorado since the arrival of the white man, and there is no 
proof -of its previous existence there. This statement is made 
after a full examination of the evidence. 
The purpose of this paper has been to gather and summarize the 
known facts about this interesting animal and it has been neces- 
sary to discard a large amount of data contained in the literature 
of the subject. Statements by certain writers regarding the ex- 
istence of the goat in Wyoming, Colorado, California, and even 
New Mexico, are extremely misleading. It is positively known 
that no goat have ever existed on Mt. Shasta, although this 
mountain has been a favorite locality for stories about mountain 
goat and the mythical ibex. The origin of these fables is easily 
traced to the former existence on Mt. Shasta of mountain 
sheep, the horns and bones of which are still occasionally found 
there. The straight horns of the mountain sheep ewe are proba- 
bly responsible for most of these legends. It is bad enough to 
suggest the occurrence of goat on Mt. Shasta, but it is utterly 
absurd to assert their existence on Mt. Whitney, 300 miles 
farther south, and it is still worse to include in the range of the 
goat New Mexico or the barren coast mountains of southern 
California.* 
The above examples will suffice to show the loose manner in 
*See “ Sport and Life in Western America and British Columbia,” by A. W. 
Bailli^-Grohman, page 117, London, 1900, and “The Wilderness Hunter,” page 
130, by Theodore Roosevelt. 
