ppear to throw still more doubt on
it. Those most familiar with our sheep do not now, I believe,
acknowledge it as a valid species. It comes from the mountains of the
Klondike River, near Dawson, Yukon Territory.

What the relations of these different forms are to one another has not
yet been determined, but it may be conjectured that _Ovis canadensis,
O. nelsoni_, and _O. dalli_ differ most widely from one another;
while _O. stonei_ and _O. dalli_, with its forms, are close
together; and _O. canadensis_, and _O.c. auduboni_ are closely
related; as are also _O. nelsoni, O. mexicanus_, and _O.c.
cremnobates_. The sub-species _auduboni_ is the easternmost
member of the American sheep family, while the sheep of Chihuahua
and of Lower California are the most southern now known.

PRIMITIVE HUNTING.

At many points in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas the Indians
were formerly great sheep hunters, and largely depended on this game for
their flesh food. That it was easily hunted in primitive times cannot be
doubted, and is easily comprehended when we remember the testimony of
white observers already quoted. In certain places in the foothills of
the mountains, or in more or less isolated ranges in Utah, Nevada,
Montana, and other sections, the Indians used to beat the mountains,
driving the sheep up to the summits, where concealed bowmen might kill
them. On the summits of certain ranges which formerly were great resorts
for sheep, I have found hiding places built of slabs of the trachyte
which forms the mountain, which were used by the Indians for this
purpose in part, as, later, they were also used by the scouting warrior
as shelters and lookout stations from which a wide extent of plain might
be viewed. The sheep on the prairie or on the foothills of such ranges,
if alarmed, would of course climb to the summit, and there would be shot
with stone-headed arrows.

Mr. Muir has seen such shelters in Nevada, and he tells us also that the
Indians used to build corrals or pounds with diverging wings, somewhat
like those used for the capture of antelope and buffalo on the plains,
and that they drove the sheep into these corrals, about which, no doubt,
men, women, and children were secreted, ready to destroy the game.

Certain tribes made a practice of building converging fences and driving
the sheep toward the angle of these fences, where hunters lay in wait to
kill them, as elsewhere mentioned by Mr. Hofer. In fact,