the hunter has them at his mercy. This has nearly
as much to commend it to the self-respecting sportsman as the practice
of imitating the cry of the female moose to lure the bull to mad
recklessness and his undoing, a challenge hard for a courageous animal
to resist, a treacherous snare set before his feet. It would seem as if
a right-minded man would hesitate to take so base an advantage as by
either of these two methods of hunting.

Antelope are nearly exterminated in southern California, and there is
but a single little bunch of elk--those in the San Joaquin Valley, sole
survivors of the vast herds which ranged throughout those lowlands when
Fremont came to the country in 1845. These elk are smaller than those of
the mountains, and bear a striking resemblance to the Scotch red deer,
so familiar to us in Landseer's pictures. For years they have been
protected by the generosity and wisdom of one man, now no longer young,
an altogether public-spirited and generous act. I was taken by the
manager of this ranch to see these elk as they came at night to feed in
the alfalfa fields, and again in the morning we followed their trail
into the foothills and had a capital view of seven superb bulls in their
wild estate, as pretty a sight as one might see in California. Who can
feel ought save commiseration for a man who, standing on London bridge,
could say, "Earth has not anything to show more fair"?

Twice during the summer was I told of the presence in the mountains, by
men who thought they had seen them, of the mythical ibex. My informant,
in each instance a ranger, assured me that he had had a good look at the
animal, and was sure that it was not a mountain ram. The back-curving
horns he said were "as long as his forearm," one added instance of the
fact that a fish in the brook is worth two on the string--if a good
story be at stake! What my informant had seen, of course, was a ewe, or
young mountain ram before he had arrived at the age when the horns begin
to form their characteristic spiral. As for the great size of the horns,
the animal was running away, and every hunter is aware of the enormous
proportions which the antlers attain of an escaping elk or deer. How
they suddenly shrink when the beast is shot is another story.

Incidentally, the refuges of southern California will include the
breeding places of the trout in the upper reaches of the streams, and
will afford protection to grouse, quail, and other birds, but