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country, except in a few localities where they still remain, the sheep have been exterminated, and this is probably what has happened. Thus Dr. C. Hart Merriam writes me: "I do not believe that the plains sheep have been driven to the mountains at all, but that they have been exterminated over the greater part of their former range. In other words, that the form or sub-species inhabiting the plains (_auduboni_) is now extinct over the greater part of its range, occurring only in the localities mentioned by you. The sheep of the mountains always lived there, and, in my opinion, has received no accession from the plains. In other words, to my mind it is not a case of changed habit, but a case of extermination over large areas. The same I believe to be true in the case of elk and many other animals." That this is true of the elk--and within my own recollection--is certainly the fact. In the early days of my western travel, elk were reasonably abundant over the whole plains as far east as within 120 miles of the city of Omaha on the Missouri River, north to the Canadian boundary line--and far beyond--and south at least to the Indian Territory. From all this great area as far west as the Rocky Mountains they have disappeared, not by any emigration to other localities, but by absolute extermination. A few years ago we knew but one species of mountain sheep, the common bighorn of the West, but with the opening of new territories and their invasion by white men, more and more specimens of the bighorn have come into the hands of naturalists, with the result that a number of new forms have been described covering territory from Alaska to Mexico. These forms, with the localities from which the types have come, are as follows: _Ovis canadensis_, interior of western Canada. (Mountains of Alberta.) _Ovis canadensis auduboni_, Bad Lands of South Dakota. (Between the White and Cheyenne rivers.) _Ovis nelsoni_, Grapevine Mountains, boundary between California and Nevada. (Just south of Lat. 37 deg.) _Ovis mexicanus_, Lake Santa Maria, Chihuahua, Mexico. _Ovis stonei_, headwaters Stikine River (Che-o-nee Mountains), British Columbia. _Ovis dalli_, mountains on Forty-Mile Creek, west of Yukon River, Alaska. _Ovis dalli kenaiensis_, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska (1901). _Ovis canadensis cremnobates_, Lower California. The standing of _Ovis fannini_ has been in doubt ever since its description, and recent specimens a
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