of gentlemen who were either resident in, or
travelers through, portions of the West now or formerly occupied by the
mountain sheep, and the results of these inquiries I give below:

Prof. L.V. Pirsson, of Yale University, who has spent a number of years
in studying the geology of various portions of the northern Rocky
Mountains, wrote me with considerable fullness in 1896 concerning the
game situation in some of the front ranges of the Rockies, where sheep
were formerly very abundant. In the Crazy Mountains he says he saw no
sheep, and that while it was possible they might be there, they must
certainly be rare. In 1880 there were many sheep there. In the Castle
Mountains none were seen, nor reported, nor any traces seen. The same is
true of the Little Belt, Highwood, and Judith Mountains. He understood
that sheep were still present in the bad lands; immediately about the
mountains and east of them the country was too well settled for any game
to live. Earlier, however, in the summer of 1890, passing through the
Snowy Mountains, which lie north of the National Park, sheep were seen
on two occasions; a band of ten ewes and lambs on Sheep Mountain, and a
band of seven rams on the head of the stream known as the Buffalo Fork
of the Lamar River. In 1893 an old ram was killed on Black Butte, at the
extreme eastern end of the Judith Mountains, near Cone Butte, and it is
quite possible that this animal had strayed out of the bad lands on the
lower Musselshell, or on the Missouri. Even at that time there were said
to be no sheep on the Little Rockies, Bearpaws, or Sweetgrass Hills.

All the ranges spoken of were formerly great sheep ranges, and on all of
them, many years ago, I saw sheep in considerable numbers.

There are a very few sheep in the Wolf Mountains of Montana.

There are still mountain sheep among the rough bad lands on both sides
of the Missouri River, between the mouth of the Musselshell and the
mouth of Big Dry. It is hard to estimate the number of these sheep, but
there must be many hundreds of them, and perhaps thousands. As recently
as August, 1900, Mr. S.C. Leady, a ranchman in this region, advised me
that he counted in one bunch, coming to water, forty-nine sheep.

Mr. Leady further advised me that in his country, owing to the sparse
settlement, the game laws are not at all regarded, and sheep are hunted
at all times of the year. The settlers themselves advocate the
protection of the game, but there is