My friend, Mr. Herbert Brown, of Yuma, Ariz., so well known as an enthusiastic and painstaking observer of natural history matters, has kindly written me something as to the mountain sheep in that Territory.  He says:  “Under the game law of Arizona the killing of mountain sheep is absolutely prohibited, but that does not prevent their being killed.  It does, however, prevent their being killed for the market, and it was killing for the market that threatened their extermination.  So far as I have ever been able to learn, these sheep range, or did range, on all the mountains to the north, west, and south of Tucson, within a hundred miles or so.  I know of them in the Superstition Mountains, about a hundred miles to the north; in the Quijotoas Mountains, a like distance to the southwest, and in the mountains intermediate; I have no positive proof of their existence in the Santa Ritas, but about twenty-three years ago I saw a pair of old and weather-beaten horns that had been picked up in that range near Agua Caliente, that is about ten or twelve miles southwest of Mt.  Wrightson.  I never saw any sheep in the range, nor do I know of any one more fortunate than myself in that respect.  In days gone by the Santa Catalinas, the Rincon, and the Tucson Mountains were the most prolific hunting grounds for the market men.  So far as I can remember, the first brought to the market here were subsequent to the coming of the railroad in 1880.  They were killed in the Tucson Mountains by the ‘Logan boys,’ well known hunters at that time.  Later the Logans made a strike in the mines and disappeared.  For several years no sheep were seen, but finally Mexicans began killing them in the Santa Catalinas, and occasionally six or eight would be hung up in the market at the same time.  Later the Papago Indians in the southwest began killing them for the market.  These people, as did also the Mexicans, killed big and little, and the animals, never abundant, were threatened with extermination.  Those killed by the Logans came from the Tucson Mountains; those killed by the Mexicans from the Santa Catalinas, and those killed by the Indians probably from the Baboquivari or Comobabi ranges.  I questioned the hunters repeatedly, but they never gave me a satisfactory answer.

“Although I never saw the sheep, I have repeatedly seen evidence of them in both the ranges named.  Inasmuch as I have not seen one in several years past, I feel very confident that there are not many to see.  Last year I learned of a large ram being killed in the Superstition Mountains which was alone when killed.  About three years ago the head of a big ram was brought to this city.  It is said to have weighed seventy pounds.  I did not see it, nor did I learn where it came from.