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