This action is momentary or very brief; the spread disc goes down again in a few seconds. The flash is usually a signal of danger, although it answers equally well for a recognition mark.
In 1897 the Antelope in the Park were estimated at 1,500. Now they have dwindled to about one third of that, and, in spite of good protection, continue to go down. They do not flourish when confined even in a large area, and we have reason to fear that one of the obscure inexorable laws of nature is working now to shelve the Antelope with the creatures that have passed away. A small band is yet to be seen wintering on the prairie near Gardiner.
THE RESCUED BIGHORN
At one time the Bighorn abounded along all the rivers where there was rough land as far east as the western edge of the Dakotas, westerly to the Cascades, and in the mountains from Mexico and Southern California to Alaska.
In one form or another the Mountain Sheep covered this large region, and it is safe to say that in the United States alone their numbers were millions. But the dreadful age of the repeating rifle and lawless skin-hunter came on, till the end of the last century saw the Bighorn in the United States reduced to a few hundreds; they were well along the sunset trail.
But the New York Zoölogical Society, the Camp Fire Club, and other societies of naturalists and sportsmen, bestirred themselves mightily. They aroused all thinking men to the threatening danger of extinction; good laws were passed and then enforced. The danger having been realized, the calamity was averted, and now the Sheep are on the increase in many parts of the West.
During the epoch of remorseless destruction the few survivors were the wildest of wild things; they would not permit the approach of a man within a mile. But our new way of looking at the Bighorn has taught them a new way of looking at us, as every traveller in Colorado or the protected parts of Wyoming will testify.
In 1897 I spent several months rambling on the upper ranges of the Yellowstone Park, and I saw not a single Sheep, although it was estimated that there were nearly a hundred of the scared fugitives hiding and flying among the rocks.
