pectors, lumbermen, trappers and
skin-hunters, and raked again and again with fine-toothed combs. A
railway line to Dawson, the Copper River and Cook Inlet is to-day merely
the next thing to expect, after Canada's present railway program has
been wrought out.

Yes, indeed! In time the wilderness will be opened up, and the big game
will _all_ be shot out, save from the protected areas.

THE MOUNTAIN GOAT.--Even yet, this species is not wholly extinct in the
United States. It survives in Glacier Park, Montana, and the number
estimated in that region by three guide friends is too astoundingly
large to mention.

This animal is much more easily killed than the big-horn. Its white coat
renders it fatally conspicuous at long range during the best hunting
season; it is almost devoid of fear, and it takes altogether too many
chances on man. Thanks to the rage for sheep horns, the average
sportsman's view-point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six
contours below "old ram" heads, in desirability. Furthermore, most
guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for use as food, and
far inferior to that of the big-horn. These reasons, taken together,
render the goats much less persecuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and
prospectors who enter the home of the two species. It was because of
this indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips and his
party saw 243 goats in thirty days in Goat Mountain Park, and only
fourteen sheep.

Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners change very
considerably, the coast mountains of the great northwestern wilderness
will remain stocked with wild mountain goats until long after the last
big-horn has been shot to death. Fortunately, the skin of the mountain
goat has no commercial value. I think it was in 1887 that I purchased,
in Denver, 150 nicely tanned skins of our wild white goat _at fifty
cents each_! They were wanted for the first exhibit ever made to
illustrate the extermination of American large mammals, and they were
shown at the Louisville Exposition. It must have cost the price of those
skins to tan them; and I was pleased to know that some one lost money on
the venture.

[Illustration MAP OF THE FORMER AND EXISTING RANGES OF THE AMERICAN ELK
From "Life History of Northern Animals," Copyright 1909 by E.T. Seton]

At present the mountain goat extends from north-western Montana to the
head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in the interior or