Chapter II: Part 2

Major Pitcher issued the order as requested.

At times the bears get so bold that they take to making inroads on the kitchen. One completely terrorized a Chinese cook. It would drive him off and then feast upon whatever was left behind. When a bear begins to act in this way or to show surliness it is sometimes necessary to shoot it. Other bears are tamed until they will feed out of the hand, and will come at once if called. Not only have some of the soldiers and scouts tamed bears in this fashion, but occasionally a chambermaid or waiter girl at one of the hotels has thus developed a bear as a pet.

The accompanying photographs not only show bears very close up, with men standing by within a few yards of them, but they also show one bear being fed from the piazza by a cook, and another standing beside a particular friend, a chambermaid in one of the hotels. In these photographs it will be seen that some are grizzlies and some black bears.

This whole episode of bear life in the Yellowstone is so extraordinary that it will be well worth while for any man who has the right powers and enough time, to make a complete study of the life and history of the Yellowstone bears. Indeed, nothing better could be done by some one of our outdoor fauna naturalists than to spend at least a year in the Yellowstone, and to study the life habits of all the wild creatures therein. A man able to do this, and to write down accurately and interestingly what he had seen, would make a contribution of permanent value to our nature literature.

In May, after leaving the Yellowstone, I visited the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and spent three days camping in the Yosemite Park with John Muir. It is hard to make comparisons among different kinds of scenery, all of them very grand and very beautiful; yet personally to me the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, strange and desolate, terrible and awful in its sublimity, stands alone and unequaled. I very earnestly wish that Congress would make it a national park, and I am sure that such course would meet the approbation of the people of Arizona. As to the Yosemite Valley, if the people of California desire it, as many of them certainly do, it also should be taken by the National Government to be kept as a national park, just as the surrounding country, including some of the groves of giant trees, is now kept.

John Muir and I, with two packers and three pack mules, spent a delightful three days in the Yosemite. The first night was clear, and we lay in the open on beds of soft fir boughs among the giant sequoias. It was like lying in a great and solemn cathedral, far vaster and more beautiful than any built by hand of man. Just at nightfall I heard, among other birds, thrushes which I think were Rocky Mountain hermits--the appropriate choir for such a place of worship. Next day we went by trail through the woods, seeing some deer--which were not wild--as well as mountain quail and blue grouse. In the afternoon we struck snow, and had considerable difficulty in breaking our own trails. A snow storm came on toward evening, but we kept warm and comfortable in a grove of the splendid silver firs--rightly named magnificent, near the brink of the wonderful Yosemite Valley. Next day we clambered down into it and at nightfall camped in its bottom, facing the giant cliffs over which the waterfalls thundered.

Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, its groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the three Tetons; and the representatives of the people should see to it that they are preserved for the people forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.

_Theodore Roosevelt_.

The Zoology of North American Big Game

Among the many questions asked of the naturalist by an inquiring public, few come up more persistently than "What is the difference between a bison and a buffalo; and which is the American animal?"

The interest which so many people find in questions such as this must serve as a justification for the present paper, which proposes no more than to put into concise form what is known of the zoological relations of the animals which come within the special interest of the Boone and Crockett Club. In doing this, conclusions must, as a rule, be stated with few of the facts upon which they rest, for to give more than the plainest of these would be to far outrun the possible limits of space, and would furthermore lead into technical details which to most readers are obscure and wearisome.

Anyone who consults Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary will be illuminated by the definition of camelopard: "An Abyssinian animal taller than an elephant, but not so thick," and even but a few years back all that was considered necessary to answer the question, "what is a bison?" was to state that it is a wild ox with a shaggy mane and a hump on its shoulders, and the thing was done; but in our own time a satisfactory answer must take account of its relationship to other beasts, for we have come to believe that the differences between animals are simply the blank spaces upon the chart of universal life, against which are traced the resemblances, which, as we follow them back into remote periods of geologic time, reveal to us definite lines of succession with structural change, and these, correctly interpreted, are nothing less than actual lines of blood relationship. To know what an animal is, therefore, we must know something of its family tree.

It is perhaps well to emphasize the need of correct interpretation, for there are no bridges on the paths of palaeontology, and as we go back, more than one great gap occurs between series of strata, marking periods of intervening time which there is no means of measuring, but during which we know that the progress of change in the animals then living never ceased. When such a break is reached, the course of phylogeny is like picking up an interrupted trail, with the additional complication that the one we find is never quite like the one we left, and it is in such conditions that the systematist must apply his knowledge of the general progressive tendencies through the ages of change, to the determination of the particular changes he should expect to find in the special case before him, and so be enabled to recognize the footprints he is in search of. The genius to do this has been given to few, but in their hands the results have often been brilliant.

Back in the very earliest Tertiary deposits, and in all certainty even earlier, a group of comparatively small mammals was extensively spread through America, and apparently less widely in Europe, characterized by a primitive form of foot structure, each of which had five complete digits, the whole sole being placed upon the ground, as in the animals we call plantigrade. The grinding surfaces of their molar teeth were also primitive, bearing none of the complicated, curved crests and ridges possessed by present ruminants, but instead they had conical cusps, usually not more than three to a tooth; this tritubercular style of molar crown being about the earliest known in true mammals.

In the opinion of many palaeontologists, the ancestors of the present hoofed beasts, or ungulates, were contained among these _Condylarthra_, as they were named by Prof. Cope.

Of course, these early mammals are known to us only by their fossil and mostly fragmentary skeletons, but it may be said that at least in the ungulate line, the successive geological periods show steady structural progression in certain directions. Of great importance are a decrease in the number of functional digits; a gradual elevation of the heel, so that their modern descendants walk on the tips of their toes, instead of on the whole sole; a constant tendency to the development of deeply grooved and interlocked joints in place of shallow bearing surfaces; and to a complex pattern of the molar crowns instead of the simple type mentioned. To this may be added as the most important factor of all in survival, that these changes have progressed together with an increase in the size of the brain and in the convolutions of its outer layer.

The _Condylarthra_ seem to have gone out of existence before the time of the middle Eocene, but before this they had become separated into the two great divisions of odd-toed and even-toed ungulates, into which all truly hoofed beasts now living fall.

The first group (_Perissodactyla_) has always one or three toes functionally developed, either the third, or third, second and fourth, the two others having entirely disappeared, except for a remnant of the fifth in the forefoot of tapirs. They have retained some at least of the upper incisor teeth, and, except in some rhinoceroses, the canines are also left; the molars and premolars are practically alike in all recent species, and in all of which we know the soft parts, the stomach has but one compartment, and there is an enormous caecum. It is probable that they took rise earlier than their split-footed relations, and their Tertiary remains are far more numerous, but their tendency is toward disappearance, and among existing mammals they are represented only by horses, asses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs.

Contrasted with these, _Artiodactyla_ have always an even number of functional digits, the third and fourth reaching the ground symmetrically, bearing the weight and forming the "split hoof;" the second and fifth remain, in most cases, as mere vestiges, showing externally as the accessory hoofs or dewclaws; in the hippopotamus alone they are fully developed and the animal has a four-toed foot. In deer and bovine animals the incisors and frequently the canines have disappeared from the upper jaw, and the molars are unlike the premolars in having two lobes instead of one. The stomach is always more or less complex; at its extreme reaching the ruminant type with four compartments, in association with which is a caecum reduced in size and simple in form. Nearly all have horns or antlers, at least in one sex.

Most split-hoofed animals are ruminants, but there is a small remnant, probably of early types, which are not. The present ungulates may be summed up in this way:

Odd-toed: _(Perissodactyla)_--
Horse,
Ass,
Rhinoceros,
Tapir.

Even-toed: _(Artiodactyla)_--

Non-ruminants-- Hippopotamus, Swine, Peccaries.

Ruminants-- Camels, Llamas, Chevrotains, Giraffe, Antelopes, Sheep, Goats, Musk-ox, Oxen, Deer.

The non-ruminant artiodactyls need not detain us long. Hippopotamuses are little more than large pigs with four toes; they were never American, though many species, some very small, are found in the European Tertiary. The two existing species are African.

In the western hemisphere swine are represented by the peccaries, differing from them chiefly in having six less teeth, one less accessory toe on the hind foot, and in a stomach of more complex character. Peccaries also have the metapodial bones supporting the two functional digits fused together at their upper ends, forming an imperfect "cannon bone," which is a characteristic of practically all the ruminants, but of no other hoofed beasts. One species only enters the United States along the Mexican border.

All non-ruminant ungulates have from four to six incisors in the upper jaw; the canines are present, and sometimes, as in the wart hogs, reach an extraordinary size.

Coming now to the ruminants, all digits except the third and fourth have disappeared from camels and llamas, and the nails on these are limited to their upper surface without forming a hoof, the under side being a broad pad, upon which they tread. No camel-like beasts have inhabited North America since the Pliocene age. Chevrotains, or muis deer (_Tragulidae_), are not deer in any true sense, as they have but three compartments to the stomach; antlers are absent and in their place large and protruding canine teeth are developed in the upper jaw, and the lateral metacarpal bones are complete throughout their length, instead of being represented by a mere remnant. They are the smallest of ungulates, and inhabit only portions of the Indo-Malayan region. Camels also have upper canines, and the outer, upper incisors as well.

The giraffe is separated from all living ungulates by the primitive character of its so-called "horns," which are not horns in the usual sense, but simply bony prominences of the skull covered with hair. Some of the earliest deer-like animals seem to have had simple or slightly branched antlers which were not shed, and which there is reason to believe were also hairy, and in these, as well as in other characters, giraffes and the early deer may not have been far apart. The "okapi," Sir Harry Johnston's late discovery in the Uganda forests, seems to have come from the same ancestral stock, but the giraffe has no other existing relatives.

The true deer, to which we shall return, are readily enough distinguished from the ox tribe and its allies by their solid and more or less branched antlers, usually confined to males, and periodically shed.

So, through this rapid survey, we have dropped out of the hoofed beasts all but the bovines and their near allies, and are thus far advanced toward our definition of a bison, but from this point we shall not find it easy to draw sharp distinctions, for while the _Bovidae_, as a whole, are well enough distinguished from all other animals, their characteristics are so much mixed among themselves that it is hardly possible to find any one or more striking features peculiar to one group, and for most of them recourse must be had to associations of a number of lesser characters.

Oxen, antelopes, sheep and goats agree in having hollow horns of material similar to that of which hair and nails are formed, permanently fixed upon the skull in all but one species; none of them have more than the two middle digits functionally developed, one on each side of the axis of the leg; none have the lower ends remaining of the meta-podial bones belonging to the two accessory digits; and none have either incisor or canine teeth in the upper jaw.

From animals so constructed we may first take out goats and sheep, in which the female horns are much smaller than those of males, and in some species are even absent. In nearly all of them the horns are noticeably compressed in section, either triangular or sub-triangular near the base, and are directed sometimes outwardly from the head with a circular sweep; at others with a backward curve, often spirally. The muzzle is always hairy; there is no small accessory column on the inner side of the upper molars, found always in oxen and in some antelopes; the tail is short, and scent glands are present between the digits of some or all the feet.

Now, as to the perplexing animals popularly known as antelopes. No definition could be framed which would include them all in one group, for every subordinate character seems to be present in some and absent in others, so that the most that can be done with this vast assemblage is to arrange its contents in series of genera, which may or may not be called sub-families, but which probably correspond in some degree to their real affinities. We can only say of any one of them that it is an antelope because it is not a sheep, nor a goat, nor an ox. They concern us here only to be eliminated, for they are not American, our prong-buck having a sub-family all to itself, as we shall see later, and the so-called "white goat" being usually regarded as neither goat nor truly antelope.

Within the limits of the real bovine animals, four quite distinct types may be made out, chiefly by the position of the horns upon the skull and by the shape of the horns themselves. There are also differences in the relations of the nasal and premaxillary bones, the development of the neural spines of the vertebrae, and the hairy covering of the body.

In the genus _Bos_ the horns are placed high up on the vertex of the skull, which forms a marked transverse ridge from which the hinder portion falls sharply away. The horns are nearly circular in section and almost smooth; usually they curve outward, then upward and often inward at the tip; the premaxillaries are long and generally reach to the nasals, and the anterior dorsal vertebrae are without sharply elongated spines, so that the line of the back is nearly straight. These, the true oxen, as they are sometimes termed, now exist only in domesticated breeds of cattle.

In the gaur oxen (_Bibos_) the horns are situated as in _Bos_, high up on the vertex, but are more elliptical in section; the premaxillaries are short; the dorsal vertebrae, from the third to the eleventh, bear elongated spines which produce a hump reaching nearly to the middle of the back; the tail is shorter, and the hair is short all over the body. The three species--gaur, gayal and banteng--inhabit Indo-Malayan countries, and all of them are dark brown with white stockings.

The buffaloes (_Bubalus_) are large and clumsy animals with horns more or less compressed or flattened at their bases, set low down on the vertex, which does not show the high transverse ridge of true oxen and gaurs. In old bulls of the African species the horns meet at their base and completely cover the forehead. In the arni of India they are enormously long. The dorsal spines are not much elongated, and there is no distinct hump; the premaxillae are long enough to reach the nasals. Hair is scanty all over the body, and old animals are almost wholly bare. The small and interesting anoa of Celebes, and the tamarao of Mindoro, are nearly related in all important respects to the Indian buffalo, and the carabao, used for draught and burden in the Philippines, belongs to a long domesticated race of the same animal.

Finally, in the genus _Bison_ the horns are below the vertex as in buffaloes, but are set far apart at the base, which is cylindrical; they are short and their curve is forward, upward and inward; the anterior dorsal and the last cervical vertebrae have long spines which bear a distinct hump on the shoulders; the premaxillae are short and never reach the nasals; there are fourteen, or occasionally fifteen, pairs of ribs, all other oxen having but thirteen, and there is a heavy mane about the neck and shoulders. The yak of central Asia is very bison-like in some respects, but in others departs in the direction of oxen.

So at last, group by group, we have gone through the ungulates, and the bisons alone are left, and as the American animal has short, incurved horns, set low down on the skull and far apart at the base; premaxillaries falling short of the nasals; the last cervical and the anterior dorsal vertebrae with spines; fourteen pairs of ribs, and a mane covering the shoulders, we conclude that it is a bison, and as the same characteristics with minor variations are shown by the European species, often, but wrongly, called "aurochs," we say that these two alone of existing _Bovidae_ are bisons, with the yak as a somewhat questionable relative.

In all essential respects the two bisons are very similar, but minute comparison shows that the European species, _Bison bonasus_, has a wider and flatter forehead, bearing longer and more slender horns, and all the other distinctive features are less pronounced. In the American species, _Bison bison_, the pelvis is less elevated, producing the characteristic slope of the hindquarters. It is a coincidence that the two regions originally inhabited by the bisons are those in which the white races of men have to the greatest extent thrown their restless energies into the struggle for existence, with the result that extinction to nearly the same degree has overtaken these two near cousins among oxen. A few wild members of the European species still exist in the Caucasus, as a few of the American are left in British America, but elsewhere both exist only under protection.

The carefully kept statistics of the Bielowitza herd in Grodno, western Russia, which includes nearly all but the few wild ones, shows that between 1833 and 1857 they increased in number from 768 to 1,898, but from this maximum the decrease has been constant, with trifling halts, until in 1892 less than five hundred were left; so that even if the Peace River bison are counted with the remnant of the American species, it is probable that the survivors of each race are about equal in number.

It is true that the number of our own species has lately been placed as high as a thousand, but even if these figures are correct, the seeds of decay from internal causes, such as inbreeding and the degeneration of restraint, are already sown, and the inevitable end of the race is not far off.

The Peace River, or woodland, bison has lately been separated as a sub-species _(B. bison athabascae)_, distinguished from the southern and better known form by superior size, a wider forehead, longer, more slender and incurved horns, and by a thicker and softer coat, which is also darker in color. Now, it is an interesting fact that a fossil bison skull from the lower Pliocene of India resembles the present European species, and in later geological times very similar bisons closely allied to each other, if not identical, inhabited all northern regions, including America. These were large animals with wide skulls, and there is little doubt that from this circumpolar form came both of the bisons now inhabiting Europe and America. Out of some half dozen fossil bison which have been described from America, none earlier than the latest Tertiary, _Bison latifrons_ from the Pleistocene seems likely to have been the immediate ancestor of recent American species, and as the one skull of the woodland bison which has been examined resembles both _latifrons_ and the European species more than the plains species does, it seems probable that these two more nearly represent the primitive bison, of which the former inhabitant of the prairies is a more modified descendant.

The process of elimination has at last led to this outline definition of a bison, but among the ungulates we have passed over, there are certain others which concern us because they are American.

Sheep and goats agree together and differ from oxen in being usually of smaller size; the tail is shorter, the horns of females are much smaller than those of males, they lack the accessory column on the inner side of the upper molars, and the cannon bone is longer and more slender; but when it comes to a comparison of the one with the other, it is by no means always easy to tell the difference. It is true that the early Greeks seem to have had a rough and ready rule under which mistakes were not easy, for Aristotle tells us "Alcmaeon is mistaken when he says that goats breathe through their ears," but the severely practical methods of our own day leave us little but some very minute points of difference. One of the best of these lies in the shape of the basi-occipital bone, but naturally this can be observed only in the prepared skull. The terms often employed to denote difference in the horns can have only a general application, for they break down in certain species in which the two groups approach each other. The following table expresses some fairly definite points of separation:

SHEEP (_Ovis_). GOAT (_Capra_).

1. Muzzle hairy except between 1. Muzzle entirely hairy.
and just above the
nostrils.

2. Interdigital glands on all 2. Interdigital glands, when
the feet. present, only on fore feet.

3. Suborbital gland and pit 3. Suborbital gland and pit
usually present. never present.

4. No beard nor caprine 4. Male with a beard and
smell in male. caprine smell.

5. Horns with coarse transverse 5. Horns with fine transverse
wrinkles; yellowish striations, or bold knobs
or brown; sub-triangular in front; blackish; in male
in male, spreading outward more compressed or angular,
and forward with a sweeping backward
circular sweep, points with a scythe-like curve or
turned outward and forward spirally, points turned upward
and backward.

These features are distinctive as between most sheep and most goats, but the Barbary wild sheep (_Ovis tragelaphus_) has no suborbital gland or pit, a goat-like peculiarity which it shares with the Himalayan bharal (_Ovis nahura_), in which the horns resemble closely those of a goat from the eastern Caucasus called tur (_Capra cylindricornis_), which for its part has the horns somewhat sheep-like and a very small beard. This same bharal has the goat-like habit of raising itself upon its hind legs before butting.

Both groups are a comparatively late development of the bovine stock, as they do not certainly appear before the upper Pliocene of Europe and Asia, and even at a later date their remains are not plentiful. Goats appear to have been rather the earlier, but are entirely absent from America.

The number of distinct species of sheep in our fauna is a matter of too much uncertainty to be treated with any sort of authority at this time. Most of us grew up in the belief that there was but one, the well-known mountain sheep (_Ovis canadensis_), but seven new species and sub-species have been produced from the systematic mill within recent years, six of them since 1897. It is no part of the purpose of the present paper to dwell upon much vexed questions of specific distinctness, and it will only be pointed out here that the ultimate validity of most of these supposed forms will depend chiefly upon the exactness of the conception of species which will replace among zoologists the vague ideas of the present time. Whatever the conclusion may be, it seems probable that some degree of distinction will be accorded to, at least, one or two Alaskan forms.

As sheep probably came into America from Asia during the Pleistocene, at a time when Bering's Strait was closed by land, it might be expected that those now found here would show relationship to the Kamtschatkan species (_Ovis nivicola_); and such is indeed the case, while furthermore, in the small size of the suborbital gland and pit, and in comparative smoothness of the horns, both species approach the bharal of Thibet and India, which in these respects is goat-like.

When one considers the poverty of the new world in bovine ruminants, it seems strange that three such anomalous forms should have fallen to its share as the prong-horn, the white goat and the musk-ox, of none of which have we the complete history; two of the number being entirely isolated species, sometimes regarded as the types of separate families.

The prong-horn is a curious compound. It resembles sheep in the minute structure of its hair, in its hairy muzzle, and in having interdigital glands on all its feet. Like goats, it has no sub-orbital gland nor distinct pit. Like the chamois, it has a gland below and behind the ear, the secretion of which has a caprine odor. It has also glands on the rump. It is like the giraffe in total absence of the accessory hoofs, even to the metapodials which support them. It differs from all hollow horned ungulates in having deciduous horns with a fork or anterior branch. There is not the least similarity, however, between these horns and the bony deciduous antlers of deer, for, like those of all bovines, they are composed of agglutinated hairs, set on a bony core projecting from the frontal region of the skull.

It is well known that these horn sheaths are at times shed and reproduced, but the exact regularity with which the process takes place is by no means certain, although such direct evidence as there is goes to prove that it occurs annually in the autumn. Prong-bucks have shed on eight occasions in the Zoological Gardens at Philadelphia, five times by the same animal, which reached the gardens in October, 1899, and has shed each year early in November, the last time on October 22, 1903,[1] and the writer has seen one fine head killed about November 5 in a wild state, on which the horn-sheaths were loose and ready to drop off.

[Footnote 1: It is interesting to note that the first pair shed measured 7-1/4 inches, on the anterior curve; the second pair 9-1/2, and the last three 11 inches each. The largest horns ever measured by the writer were those of a buck killed late in November, 1892, near Marathon, Texas, and were 15-3/4 inches in vertical height and 21 along the curve.]

But few of these delicate animals have lived long enough in captivity to permit study of the same individual through a course of years, and the scarcity of observations made upon them in a wild state is remarkable. That irregularity in the process would not be without analogy, is shown by the case of the Indian sambur deer, of which there is evidence from such authority as that king of sportsmen, Sir Samuel Baker, and others, that the shedding does not always occur at the same season, nor is it always annual in the same buck; and by Pore David's deer, which has been known to shed twice in one year.

When resemblances such as those of the prong-horn are so promiscuously distributed, the task of fixing their values in estimating affinities is not a light one, and in fact the most rational conclusion which we may draw from them is that they point back to a distant and generalized ancestor, who possessed them all, but that in the distribution of his physical estate, so to speak, these heirlooms have not come down alike to all descendants. There is again a complicating possibility that some may be no more than adaptive or analogous characters, similarly produced under like conditions of life, but quite independent of a common origin, and it is seldom that we know enough of the history of development of any species to conclude with certainty whether or not this has been the case. At all events, the prong-buck is quite alone in the world at present, and we know no fossils which unmistakably point to it, although it has been supposed that some of the later Miocene species of _Cosoryx_--small deer-like animals with non-deciduous horns, probably covered with hair, and molars of somewhat bovine type--may have been ancestral to it, but this is little more than a speculation. What is certain is that _Antilocapra_ is now a completely isolated form, fully entitled to rank as a family all by itself.

In the musk-ox (_Ovibos moschatus_), or "sheep-ox," as the generic name given by Blainville has it, we meet with another strange and lonely form which has contributed its full share to the problems of systematic zoology. Its remote and inaccessible range has greatly retarded knowledge of its structure, and it is only within the last three years that acquaintance has been made with its soft anatomy, and at the same time with a maze of resemblances and differences toward other ruminants, that perhaps more than equals the irregularities of the prong-buck. But unlike that species, there is in the musk-ox no extreme modification, such as a deciduous horn, to separate it distinctly from the rest of the family. A recapitulation of these differences would be too minutely technical for insertion here, and it must be enough to say that while it cannot be assigned to either group, yet in the distribution of hair on the muzzle, in the presence of a small suborbital gland, in shortness of tail and the light color of its horns, it is sheep-like; in the absence of interdigital glands, the shortness and stoutness of its cannon bones, and in the presence of a small accessory inner column on the upper molars, it is bovine. But in the coarse longitudinal striation of the bases of its horns it differs from both. The shape of the horns is also peculiar. Curving outward, downward and then sharply upward, with broad, flattened bases meeting in the middle line, their outlines are not unlike those of old bulls of the African buffalo.

At the present time the musk-ox inhabits only arctic America, from Greenland westward nearly to the Mackenzie River, but its range was formerly circumpolar, and in Pleistocene times it inhabited Europe as far south as Germany and France. The musk-ox of Greenland has lately been set aside as a distinct species. The most we can say is that _Ovibos_ is a unique form, standing perhaps somewhere between oxen and sheep, and descended from an ancient ruminant type through an ancestry of which we know nothing, for the only fossil remains which are at all distinguishable from the existing genus, are yet closely similar to it, and are no older than the Pleistocene of the central United States; in earlier periods its history is a blank about which it is useless to speculate.

The last of our three anomalies, the white, or mountain goat (_Oreamnos montanus_), is not as completely orphaned as the other two, for it seems quite surely to be connected with a small and peculiar series consisting of the European chamois and several species of _Nemorhaedus_ inhabiting eastern Asia and Sumatra. These are often called mountain antelopes, or goat antelopes. So little is yet known of the soft anatomy of the white goat that we are much in the dark as to its minute resemblances, but its glandular system is certainly suggestive of the chamois, and many of its attitudes are strikingly similar. In all the points in which it approaches goats it is like some, at least, among antelopes, while in the elongated spines of the anterior dorsal vertebrae, which support the hump, and in extreme shortness of the cannon bone, it is far from goat-like. The goat idea, indeed, has little more foundation than the suggestive resemblance of the profile with its caprine beard. It is truly no goat at all, and should more properly be regarded as an aberrant antelope, if anything could be justly termed "aberrant" in an aggregation of animals, hardly any two of which agree in all respects of structure. No American fossils seem to point to _Oreamnos_, and as _Nemorhaedus_ extends to Japan and eastern Siberia, it is probable that it was an Asiatic immigrant, not earlier than the Pleistocene.

From this intricate genealogical tangle one turns with relief to the deer family, where the course of development lies reasonably plain. If the rank of animals in the aristocracy of nature were to be fixed by the remoteness of the period to which we know their ancestors, the deer would out-rank their bovine cousins by a full half of the Miocene period, and the study of fossils onward from this early beginning presents few clearer lines of evidence supporting modern theories respecting the development of species, than is shown in the increasing size and complexity of the antlers in succeeding geological ages, from the simple fork of the middle Miocene to those with three prongs of the late Miocene, the four-pronged of the Pliocene, and finally to the many-branched shapes of the Pleistocene and the present age. Now it is further true that each one of these types is represented today in the mature antlers of existing deer, from the small South American species with a simple spike, up to the wapiti and red deer carrying six or eight points, and still more significant is it that the whole story is recapitulated in the growth of each individual of the higher races. The earliest cervine animals known seem to have had no antlers at all, a stage to which the fawn of the year corresponds; the subsequent normal addition in the life-history, of a tine for each year of growth until the mature antler is reached, answering with exactness to the stages of advance shown in the development-history of the race. A year of individual life is the symbol of a geological period of progression. This is a marvelous record, of which we may say--paraphrasing with Huxley the well-known saying of Voltaire--"if it had not already existed, evolution must have been invented to explain."

The least technical, and for the present purpose the most useful of the characters distinguishing existing deer from all of the bovine stock, lies in the antlers, which are solid, of bony substance, and are annually shed. They are present in the males of all species except the Chinese water deer, and the very divergent musk-deer, which probably should not be regarded as a deer at all. They are normally absent from all females except those of the genus _Rangifer_. Most deer have canine teeth in the upper jaw, though they are absent in the moose, in the distinctively American type and a few others. The cleaned skull always shows a large vacuity in the outer wall in front of the orbit, which prevents the lachrymal bone from reaching the nasals. No deer has a gall bladder. There are many other distinctions, but as all have exceptions they are of value only in combinations.

The earliest known deer, belonging to the genus _Dremotherium_, or _Amphitragulus_, from the middle Tertiary of France, were of small size and had four toes, canine teeth and no antlers. Their successors seem to have borne simple forked antlers or horns, probably covered with hair, and permanently fixed on the skull. Very similar animals existed in contemporaneous and later deposits in North America. From this point the course of progress is tolerably clear as to deer in general, although we are not sure of all the intermediate details--for it must not be forgotten that a series of types exhibiting progressive modifications in each succeeding geological period is quite as conclusive in pointing out the genealogy of an existing group as if we knew each individual term in the ancestral series of each of its members. Thus we do not yet know whether the peculiar antler of the distinctively American deer, of the genus _Mazama_, is derived from an American source or took its origin in the old world, for the fossil antlers known as _Anoglochis_, from the Pliocene of Europe, are quite suggestive of the _Mazama_ style, but as nothing is known of the other skeletal details of _Anoglochis_, any such connection must at present be purely speculative, but the element of doubt in this special case in no way disturbs the certainty of the general conclusion that all our present _Cérvidae_ have come through distinct stages in the successive periods, from the simple types of the middle Tertiary.

The family is undoubtedly of old world origin, and for the most part belongs to the northern hemisphere, South America being the only continental area in which they are found south of the equator.

The analytical habit of mind which finds vent in the subdivision of species, is also exhibited in a tendency to break up large genera into a number of small ones, but in the present group this practice has the disadvantage of obscuring a broad distinction between the dominant types inhabiting respectively the old world and the new. The former, represented by the genus _Cervus_, has a brow-tine to the antlers; has the posterior portion of the nasal chamber undivided by the vertical plate of the vomer; and the upper ends only of the lateral metacarpals remain, whereas in all these particulars the typical American deer are exactly opposite. As there are objections to considering these characters as of family value, arising from the intermediate position of the circumpolar genera _Alces_ and _Rangifer_, as well as the water deer and the roe, a broader meaning is given to classification by retaining the comprehensive genera _Cervus_ and _Mazama_, and recognizing the subordinate divisions only as sub-genera.

The one representative of _Cervus_ inhabiting America is the wapiti, or "elk" (_C. canadensis_), which is without doubt an immigrant from Asia by way of Alaska, and it may be of interest to state the grounds upon which this conclusion rests, as they afford an excellent example of the way in which such results are reached. It is an accepted truth in geographical distribution, that the portion of the earth in which the greatest number of forms differentiated from one type are to be found, is almost always the region in which that type had its origin. Now, out of about a dozen species and sub-species of wapiti and red deer to which names have been given, not less than eight are Asiatic, so that Asia, and probably its central portion, is indicated as the region in which the elaphine deer arose; in confirmation of which is the further fact that the antler characteristic of these deer seems to have originated from the same ancestral form as that which produced the sikine and rusine types, which are also Asiatic. From this centre the elaphines spread westward and eastward, resulting in Europe in the red deer, which penetrated southward into north Africa at a time when there was a land connection across the Mediterranean. In the opposite direction, the nearer we get to Bering's Straits the closer is the resemblance to the American wapiti, until the splendid species from the Altai Mountains (_C. canadensis asiaticus_), and Luehdorf's deer (_C. c. luehdorfi_) from Manchuria, are regarded only as sub-species of the eastern American form, which they approach through _C. c. occidentalis_ of Oregon and the northwestern Pacific Coast.

This evidence is conclusive in itself, and is further confirmed by the geological record, from which we know that the land connection between Alaska and Kamtschatka was of Pliocene age, while we have no knowledge of the wapiti in America until the succeeding period.

While there is not the least doubt that the smaller American deer had an origin identical with those of the old world, the exact point of their separation is not so clear. Two possibilities are open to choice: _Mazama_ may be supposed to have descended from the group to which _Blastomeryx_ belonged, this being a late Miocene genus from Nebraska, with cervine molars, but otherwise much like _Cosoryx,_ which we have seen to be a possible ancestor of the prong-horn; or we may prefer to believe that the differentiation took place earlier in Europe or Asia, from ancestors common to both. But there is a serious dilemma. If we choose the former view, we must conclude that the deciduous antler was independently developed in each of the two continents, and while it is quite probable that approximately similar structures have at times arisen independently, it is not easy to believe that an arrangement so minutely identical in form and function can have been twice evolved. On the second supposition, we have to face the fact that there is very little evidence from palaeontology of the former presence of the American type in Eurasia. But, on the whole, the latter hypothesis presents fewer difficulties and is probably the correct one; in which case two migrations must have taken place, an earlier one of the generalized type to which _Blastomeryx_ and _Cosoryx_ belonged, and a later one of the direct ancestor of _Mazama_. There is little difficulty in the assumption of these repeated migrations, for evidence exists that during a great part of the last half of the Tertiary this continent was connected by land to the northwest with Asia, and to the northeast, through Greenland and Iceland, with western Europe.

The distinction between the two groups is well marked. All the _Mazama_ type are without a true brow-tine to the antlers; the lower ends of the lateral metacarpals only remain; the vertical plate of the vomer extends downward and completely separates the hind part of the nasal chamber into two compartments; and with hardly an exception they have a large gland on the inside of the tarsus, or heel. The complete development of these characters is exhibited in northern species, and it has been beautifully shown that as we go southward there is a strong tendency to diminished size; toward smaller antlers and reduction in the number of tines; to smaller size, and finally complete loss of the metatarsal gland on the outside of the hind leg; and to the assumption of a uniform color throughout the year, instead of a seasonal change.

The two styles of antler which we recognize in the North American deer are too well known to require description. That characterizing the mule deer (_Mazama hemionus_) and the Columbia black-tailed deer (_M. columbiana_), seems never to have occurred in the east, nor south much beyond the Mexican border, and these deer have varied little except in size, although three subspecies have lately been set off from the mule deer in the extreme southwest.

The section represented by _M. virginiana,_ with antlers curving forward and tines projecting from its hinder border, takes practically the whole of America in its range, and under the law of variation which has been stated, has proved a veritable gold mine to the makers of names. At present it is utterly useless to attempt to determine which of the forms described will stand the scrutiny of the future, and no more will be attempted here than to state the present gross contents of cervine literature. The sub-genus _Dorcelaphus_ contains all the forms of the United States; of these, the deer belonging east of the Missouri River, those from the great plains to the Pacific, those along the Rio Grande in Texas and Mexico, those of Florida, and those again of Sonora, are each rated as sub-species of _virginiana_; to which we must add six more, ranging from Mexico to Bolivia. One full species, _M. truei,_ has been described from Central America, and another rather anomalous creature (_M. crookii_), resembling both white-tail and mule deer, from New Mexico.

The other sub-genera are _Blastoceros,_ with branched antlers and no metatarsal gland; _Xenelaphus,_ smaller in size, with small, simply forked antlers and no metatarsal gland; _Mazama_, containing the so-called brockets, very small, with minute spike antlers, lacking the metatarsal and sometimes the tarsal gland as well. The last three sub-genera are South American and do not enter the United States. Another genus, _Pudua_, from Chili, is much like the brockets, but has exceedingly short cannon bones, and some of the tarsal bones are united in a manner unlike other deer. In all, thirty specific and sub-specific names are now carried on the roll of _Mazama_ and its allies.

Attention has already been directed to the parallelism between the course of progress from simple to complex antlers in the development of the deer tribe, and the like progress in the growth of each individual, and to the further fact that all the stages are represented in the mature antlers of existing species. But a curious result follows from a study of the past distribution of deer in America. At a time when the branched stage had been already reached in North America, the isthmus of Panama was under water; deer were then absent from South America and the earliest forms found fossil there had antlers of the type of _M. virginiana_. The small species with simple antlers only made their appearance in later periods, and it follows that they are descended from those of complex type. This third parallel series, therefore, instead of being direct as are the other two, is reversed, and the degeneration of the antler, which we have seen taking place in the southern deer, has followed backward on the line of previous advance, or, in biological language, appears to be a true case of retrogressive evolution--representing the fossil series, as it were, in a mirror.

The reindeer-caribou type, of the genus _Rangifer,_ agrees with American deer in having the vertical plate of the vomer complete, and in having the lower ends of the lateral metacarpals remaining, but, like _Cervus,_ it has a brow-tine to the antlers. Of its early history we know nothing, for the only related forms which have yet come to light are of no great antiquity, being confined to the Pleistocene of Europe as far south as France, and are not distinguishable from existing species. Until recently it has been supposed that one species was found in northern Europe and Asia, and two others, a northern and a southern, in North America, but lately the last two have been subdivided, and the present practice is to regard the Scandinavian reindeer (_Rangifer tarandus_) as the type, with eight or nine other species or sub-species, consisting of the two longest known American forms, the northern, or barren-ground caribou (_R. arcticus_); the southern, or woodland (_R. caribou_); the three inhabiting respectively Spitzbergen, Greenland and Newfoundland, and still more lately four more from British Columbia and Alaska. The differences between these are not very profound, but they seem on the whole to represent two types: the barren-ground, small of size, with long, slender antlers but little palmated; and the woodland, larger, with shorter and more massive antlers, usually with broad palms. There is some reason to believe that both these types lived in Europe during the interglacial period, the first-named being probably the earlier and confined to western Europe, while the other extended into Asia. The present reindeer of Greenland and Spitzbergen seem to agree most closely with the barren-ground, while the southern forms are nearest to the woodland, and these are said to also resemble the reindeer of Siberia. It is, therefore, not an improbable conjecture that there were two migrations into America, one of the barren-ground type from western Europe, by way of the Spitzbergen land connection, and the other of the woodland, from Siberia, by way of Alaska.

Little more can be said, perhaps even less, of the other circumpolar genus, _Alces_, known in America as "moose," and across the Atlantic as "elk." It also is of mixed character in relation to the two great divisions we have had in mind, but in a different way from reindeer.

Like American deer it has the lower ends of the lateral metacarpals remaining, and the antlers are without a brow-tine, but like _Cervus_ it has an incomplete vomer, and unlike deer in general, the antlers are set laterally on the frontal bone, instead of more or less vertically, and the nasal bones are excessively short. The animal of northern Europe and Asia is usually considered to be distinct from the American, and lately the Alaskan moose has been christened _Alces gigas_, marked by greater size, relatively more massive skull, and huge antlers. Of the antecedents of _Alces_, as in the case of the reindeer, we are ignorant. The earlier Pleistocene of Europe has yielded nearly related fossils,[2] and a peculiar and probably rather later form comes from New Jersey and Kentucky. This last in some respects suggests a resemblance to the wapiti, but it is unlikely that the similarity is more than superficial, and as moose not distinguishable from the existing species are found in the same formation, it is improbable that _Cervalces_ bore to _AIces_ anything more than a collateral relationship.

[Footnote 2: The huge fossil known as "Irish elk" is really a fallow deer and in no way nearly related to the moose.]

Even to an uncritical eye, the differences between ungulates and carnivores of to-day are many and obvious, but as we trace them back into the past we follow on converging lines, and in our search for the prototypes of the carnivora we are led to the _Creodonta_, contemporary with _Condylarthra_, which we have seen giving origin to hoofed beasts, but outlasting them into the succeeding age. These two groups of generalized mammals approached each other so nearly in structure, that it is even doubtful to which of them certain outlying fossils should be referred, and the assumption is quite justified that they had a common ancestor in the preceding period, of which no record is yet known.

The most evident points in which _Carnivora_ differ from _Ungulata_ are their possession of at least four and frequently five digits, which always bear claws and never hoofs; all but the sea otter have six small incisor teeth in each jaw; the canines are large; the molars never show flattened, curved crests after the ruminant pattern, but are more or less tubercular, and one tooth in the hinder part of each jaw becomes blade-like, for shearing off lumps of flesh. This tooth is called the sectorial, or carnassial.

Existing carnivores are conveniently divided into three sections: _Arctoidea_--bears, raccoons, otters, skunks, weasels, etc.; _Canoidea_--dogs, wolves and foxes; _Aeluroidea_--cats, civets, ichneumons and hyaenas.

It is highly probable that these three chief types have descended in as many distinct lines from the _Creodonta_, and that they were differentiated as early as the middle Eocene, but their exact degree of affinity is uncertain; bears and dogs are certainly closer together than either of them are to cats, and it is questionable if otters and weasels--the _Mustelidae_, as they are termed--and raccoons are really near of kin to bears.