“The Superstition and the Santa Catalinas are the very essence of ruggedness, but notwithstanding this I am constrained to believe that the days of big game are nearly numbered in Arizona.  The reasons for this are readily apparent.  The mountain ranges are more or less mineralized.  To this there is hardly an exception.  There is no place so wild and forbidding that the prospector will not enter it.  If ‘pay rock’ or ‘pay dirt’ is struck, then good-by solitude and big game.  A second cause is to be found in the cattle industry, which, as a rule, is very profitable.  One of the most successful cattle growers in the country once told me that cattle in Arizona would breed up to 95 per cent.  These breeders during the dry season leave the mesas and climb to the top of the very highest mountains, and, of course, the more cattle the less game.  A year ago I was in the Harshaw Mountains, and was told by a young man named Sorrell that a bunch of wild cattle occupied a certain peak, and that on a certain occasion he had seen a big mountain sheep with the cattle.

“So far as I know, I never saw or heard of a case of scab among wild sheep.”

Later, but still in 1898, Mr. Brown wrote me that, according to Mr. J. D. Thompson, mountain sheep are common in all the mountains bordering the Gulf Coast in Sonora, and also in Lower California.  Mr. Thompson is operating mines in the Sierra Pinto, Sonora, 180 miles southeast of Yuma.  This range is about six miles long and 800 feet high.  The mule deer and sheep are killed according to necessity.  Indians do the killing.  A mule deer is worth two dollars, Mexican money, and a sheep but little more, although the former are much more abundant than the latter.  The last sheep taken to camp was traded off for a pair of overalls.

“It is reasonably certain that with sheep in southern Arizona and southern Sonora, every mountain range between the two must be tenanted by this species.

“During the August feast days the Papago Indians living about Quitovac generally have a Montezuma celebration, in which live deer are employed.  For this purpose several are caught.  Subsequently they are killed and eaten.  They are taken by relays of men or horses, sometimes both.”

In northern Arizona sheep are still common.  Dr. C. Hart Merriam in his report on the San Francisco Mountain—­“North American Fauna” III.—­recorded the San Francisco herd, of which he saw eight or nine together.  He also recorded their presence at the Grand Canyon, where they are still fairly common, though very wary.

Mr. A.W.  Anthony, of California, wrote me in 1898 concerning sheep in southern California, and I am glad to quote his letter almost in full.  He says:  “In San Diego county, Cal., there are a few sheep along the western edge of the Colorado Desert.  So far as I know, these are all in the first ranges above the desert, and do not extend above the pinon belt.  These barren hills are dry, broken