the whitetail and the different forms of blacktail, though much less, is also clearly marked. But when we come to consider the blacktail among themselves, we find two very distinct types which yet show a certain tendency to 5 intergrade; and with the whitetail very wide differences exist, even in the United States, both individually among the deer of certain localities, and also as between all the deer of one locality when compared with all the deer of another. Our present knowledge of the various forms 10 hardly justifies us in dogmatizing as to their exact relative worth, and even if our knowledge was more complete, naturalists are as yet wholly at variance as to the laws which should govern specific nomenclature. However, the hunter, the mere field naturalist, and the lover of 15 outdoor life, are only secondarily interested in the niceness of these distinctions, and it is for them that this volume is written. Accordingly, I shall make no effort to determine the number of different but closely allied forms of smaller deer which are found in North Temper20 ate America.

25

Disregarding the minor differences, there are in North America in addition to the so-called antelope, six wholly distinct kinds of deer: the moose, caribou, wapiti, whitetail, and the two blacktails.

The moose in its various forms reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the cold boreal forests of Canada, extending its range down into the United States in northern New England, Minnesota, and along the Rocky Mountains. It was exterminated from the Adirondacks 30 in the early sixties, about the time that the wapiti was exterminated in Pennsylvania, or very shortly before. It is the brother of the Old World elk, and its huge size,

shovel horns, short neck, swollen nose, and long legs distinguish it at a glance from any other animal.

The caribou is found throughout most of the moose's range, but it does not extend so far south, and in some of its forms reaches much farther north, being found on the 5 cold barrens, from Newfoundland to the shores of the Arctic. It is the only animal which is still at certain seasons found in enormous multitudes comparable to the vast herds of bison in the old days, and in parts of its range it is being slaughtered in the same butcherly spirit 10 that was responsible for the extinction of the bison. The different kinds of American caribou are closely akin to the reindeer of the Old World, and their long, irregularly branched antlers, with palmated ends, their big feet, coarse heads, and stout bodies, render them as easily dis- 15 tinguishable as the moose.

The wapiti or round-horned elk always had its centre of abundance in the United States, though in the West it was also found far north of the Canadian line. This splendid deer affords a good instance of the difficulty of deciding 20 what name to use in treating of our American game. On the one hand, it is entirely undesirable to be pedantic; and on the other hand, it seems a pity, at a time when speech is written almost as much as spoken, to use terms which perpetually require explanation in order to avoid confu-25 sion. The wapiti is not properly an elk at all; the term wapiti is unexceptionable, and it is greatly to be desired that it should be generally adopted. But unfortunately it has not been generally adopted. From the time when our backwoodsmen first began to hunt the animal among the 30 foot-hills of the Appalachian chains to the present day, it has been universally known as elk wherever it has been

found. In ordinary speech it is never known as anything else, and only an occasional settler or hunter would understand what the word wapiti referred to. The book name is a great deal better than the common name; but after all, 5 it is only a book name. The case is almost exactly parallel to that of the buffalo, which was really a bison, but which lived as the buffalo, died as the buffalo, and left its name imprinted on our landscape as the buffalo. There is little use in trying to upset a name which is imprinted in our 10 geography in hundreds of such titles as Elk Ridge, Elk Mountain, Elkhorn River. Yet in the bocks it is often necessary to call it the wapiti in order to distinguish it both from its different named close kinsfolk of the Old World, and from its more distant relatives with which it 15 shares the name of elk. It is the largest of the true deer, and the noblest and stateliest of the deer kind throughout the world. It is closely akin to the much smaller European stag or red deer, and still more closely to certain Asiatic deer, one of which so closely approaches it in size, 20 appearance, and stately presence as to be almost indistinguishable. Its huge and yet delicately moulded proportions, and its massive, rounded antlers, the beam of which bends backward from the head, while the tines are thrust forward, render it impossible to confound it with any 25 other species of American deer. Owing to its habitat it has suffered from the persecution of hunters and settlers more than any other of its fellows in America, and the boundaries of its range have shrunk in far greater proportion. The moose and caribou have in most places greatly 30 diminished in numbers, and have here and there been exterminated altogether from outlying portions of their range; but the wapiti has completely vanished from nine

tenths of the territory over which it roamed a century and a quarter ago. Although it was never found in any one place in such enormous numbers as the bison and the caribou, it nevertheless went in herds far larger than the herds of any other American game save the two men- 5 tioned, and was formerly very much more abundant within the area of its distribution than was the moose within the area of its distribution. It is now almost limited to certain mountainous areas in the Rockies and on the Pacific coast,-The Pacific coast form differing from 10 the ordinary form.

The remaining three deer are much more closely connected with one another, all belonging to the same genus. The whitetail has always been, and is now, on the whole the commonest of American game, and it has held its 15 own better than any other kind. It is found from southern Canada, in various forms, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, down into South America. It is given various names, and throughout most of its habitat is simply known as "deer"; but wherever it comes in contact with 20 the blacktail it is almost invariably called whitetail. This is a very appropriate name, for its tail is habitually so carried as to be extremely conspicuous, being white and bushy, only the middle part above being dark colored. The antlers curve out and forward, the prongs branch-25 ing from the posterior surface.

The Rocky Mountain blacktail or mule-deer is somewhat larger, with large ears, its tail short-haired and round, white excepting for a black tip, and with antlers which fork evenly like the prongs of a pitchfork, so that it 30 is difficult to say which prong should be considered the main shaft,—and each prong itself bifurcates again. In

the books this animal is called the mule-deer, but throughout its haunts it is almost always known simply as the blacktail. It is found in rough, broken country from the Bad Lands of the western Dakotas to the Pacific coast, 5 and is everywhere the characteristic deer of the Rocky Mountains. The southern California form is peculiar, especially in having a dark stripe on the tail above.

The true blacktail is found on the Pacific coast from southern Alaska to northern California. Its horns are 10 like those of the Rocky Mountain blacktail; its tail is more like that of the whitetail, but is not as large, and the white is much reduced, the color above and on the sides, to the very tip, being barely black.

The most striking and melancholy feature in connection 15 with American big game is the rapidity with which it has vanished. When, just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the rifle-bearing hunters of the backwoods first penetrated the great forests west of the Alleghanies, deer, elk, black bear, and even buffalo swarmed 20 in what are now the states of Kentucky and Tennessee; and the country north of the Ohio was a great and almost virgin hunting-ground. From that day to this the shrinkage has gone on, only partially checked here and there, and never arrested as a whole. As a matter of historical 25 accuracy, however, it is well to bear in mind that a great many writers in lamenting this extinction of the game have, from time to time, anticipated or overstated the facts. Thus as good an author as Colonel Richard Irving Dodge spoke of the buffalo as practically extinct, while 30 the great northern herd still existed in countless thousands. As early as 1880 very good sporting authorities spoke not only of the buffalo but of the elk, deer, and antelope