The white goat is odd in appearance. At first glance it seems to be a slow, clumsy creature; in fact, it is the most expert and daring rock climber of all American hoofed animals. The hoofs are small, angular and very compact and consist of a combination of rubber-pad inside and knife-edge outside to hold the goat equally well on snow, ice or bare rock. It is said that goats will cross walls of rock which neither man, dog nor mountain sheep would dare attempt to pass. Sometimes they walk along the face of a precipice of apparently smooth rock; yet in doing so they frequently look back and turn around whenever they feel so inclined. The white goat is built something on the order of a small American bison. Its head is carried low and the horns are small and short. Its hair is yellowish-white. Next to the skin is a thick coat of fine wool through which grows a long outside thatch of coarse hair. It is an animal of phlegmatic temperament. A story has been told of one goat, whose “partner” had been shot, which deliberately sat down a short distance away and watched the hunter skin and cook a portion of his dead mate. Its flesh is musky and dry and it is not palatable to white men except when they are exceedingly hungry. Its skin has no commercial value. For these reasons and also because it is hard to reach, the Rocky Mountain goat is not likely to be exterminated very soon. BASED ON MATERIAL DRAWN FROM “THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY,” COPYRIGHT 1904, BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 4. No. 13. SERIAL No. 113 [Illustration: FROM A PAINTING BY CARL RUNGIUS COPYRIGHT 1904 CARIBOU] Game Animals of America CARIBOU Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course With the exception of the musk-ox, the caribou is the most northerly of all hoofed animals. This animal not only roams on the vast Arctic waste above Great Slave Lake, known as the Barren Grounds, but it also ranges over the west coast of Greenland, along the edge of the great ice cap and perhaps over the entire coast of Greenland. Wherever the naked ridges and valleys yield it food, the caribou may be found. The caribou is a rather odd-looking creature. It is interesting to note that Nature has provided it with a body especially made to enable it to brave the terrors of a frigid climate. Its legs are thick and strong and its hoofs are expanded and flattened until they form very good snowshoes. Where a moose sinks in, a caribou is able to walk over snowfields and quaking marshes. The skin of the caribou is covered with a thick, closely matted coat of fine hair; through this grows the coarse hair of the rain-coat. This makes a very warm covering--in fact the warmest on any hoofed animal except the musk-ox. It is like a thick, felt mat.