That this is true of the elk—and within my own recollection—is certainly the fact. In the early days of my western travel, elk were reasonably abundant over the whole plains as far east as within 120 miles of the city of Omaha on the Missouri River, north to the Canadian boundary line—and far beyond—and south at least to the Indian Territory. From all this great area as far west as the Rocky Mountains they have disappeared, not by any emigration to other localities, but by absolute extermination.
A few years ago we knew but one species of mountain sheep, the common bighorn of the West, but with the opening of new territories and their invasion by white men, more and more specimens of the bighorn have come into the hands of naturalists, with the result that a number of new forms have been described covering territory from Alaska to Mexico. These forms, with the localities from which the types have come, are as follows:
Ovis canadensis, interior of western Canada. (Mountains of Alberta.)
Ovis canadensis auduboni, Bad Lands of South Dakota. (Between the White and Cheyenne rivers.)
Ovis nelsoni, Grapevine Mountains, boundary between California and Nevada. (Just south of Lat. 37 deg.)
Ovis mexicanus, Lake Santa Maria, Chihuahua, Mexico.
Ovis stonei, headwaters Stikine River (Che-o-nee Mountains), British Columbia.
Ovis dalli, mountains on Forty-Mile Creek, west of Yukon River, Alaska.
Ovis dalli kenaiensis, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska (1901).
Ovis canadensis cremnobates, Lower California.