d
that an "old settler" had seen "a small bunch in 1886." Visher also
reported finding bison remains, probably in 1910 or 1912, to the
northeast of the North Cave Hills and west of the South Cave Hills.

~Ovis canadensis auduboni~ Merriam, 1901

Mountain Sheep

According to Visher (1914:88), mountain sheep formerly inhabited all the
areas of buttes in Harding County but were extirpated in the 1890's.
Sheep Mountain, a large butte just below the south end of the Slim
Buttes, was reported to be the last area in which these animals
occurred. Over and Churchill (1945:54) mentioned both the Cave Hills and
Slim Buttes as localities formerly inhabited by _O. c. auduboni_.

Early in 1961, the South Dakota Game Commission introduced 12 animals,
four rams and eight ewes, from Alberta (subspecies _O. c. canadensis_)
on the Slim Buttes, but none is known to have survived to 1968.

SPECIES OF UNVERIFIED OCCURRENCE

The ten species of mammals listed below are not known certainly to occur
in Harding County, but there is a strong likelihood that some will be
found in the area or once occurred there. Three were mentioned by Visher
(1914) as having been seen or taken in the county at the time of, or
prior to, his biological survey of 1910 and 1912, but his accounts were
not supported by adequate documentation. In addition to the kinds
listed, several other mammals, such as Keen's bat (_Myotis keenii
septentrionalis_), the red bat (_Lasiurus borealis borealis_), or the
least weasel (_Mustela nivalis campestris_) are known to occur near
enough to the area that the possibility of their presence cannot be
discounted.

~Sorex cinereus haydeni~ Baird, 1858.--No shrews presently are known from
Harding County. This species almost certainly will be found in
relatively mesic habitats there, however, as our field parties have
taken specimens in adjacent Bowman County, North Dakota, and only a few
miles to the west of the county in the Long Pines Hills of Montana.

~Sorex merriami merriami~ Dobson, 1890.--This shrew inhabits somewhat more
xeric areas than most other members of the genus and surely occurs in
northwestern South Dakota. Specimens are on record from western North
Dakota and northwestern Nebraska, and in the summer of 1970 a field
party from The University of Kansas took one but a half mile west of the
Harding County (state) line in Carter County, Montana.

~Spermophilus richardsonii richardsonii~ (Sabine, 1822).--Visher (1