Mental Attitude of Captured Big-Horn Sheep. In 1906 an enterprising and irrepressible young man named Will Frakes took the idea into his head that he must catch some mountain sheep alive, and do it alone and single-handed. Presently he located a few _Ovis nelsoni_ in the Avawatz Mountains near Death Valley, California. Finding a water hole to which mountain sheep occasionally came at night to drink, he set steel traps around it. One by one he caught five sheep of various ages, but chiefly adults. The story of this interesting performance is told in _Outdoor Life_ magazine for March, April and May, 1907. I am interested in the mental processes of those sheep as they came in close contact with man, and were compelled by force of circumstances to accept captivity. Knowing, as all animal men do, the fierce resistance usually made by adult animals to the transition from freedom to captivity, I was prepared to read that those nervous and fearsome adult sheep fought day by day until they died. But not so. Those sheep showed clear perceptive faculties and good judgment. They were quick to learn that they were conquered, and with amazing resignation they accepted the new life and its strange conditions. In describing the chase on foot in thick darkness of a big old male mountain sheep with a steel trap fast on his foot, Mr. Frakes says: "A sheep's token of surrender is to lie down and lie still. Once he 'possums, no matter what you do, or how badly you may hurt him, he will never flinch. And when this sheep ("Old Stonewall") was thrown down by the trap, he evidently thought that he was captured, and lay still for a few minutes before he found out the difference, which gave me time to come up with him.... So I went to camp, got a trap clamp and some sacks, made a kind of sled and dragged him in. It was just midnight when I got him tied down, and just sun-up when I got to camp with him. I fixed him up the best I could, stood him up beside the other big-horn and took their pictures. He looked so "rough and ready" that I named him "Old Stonewall." But for all his proud, defiant bearing he has always been a good sheep, _and never tried to fight me._ Still he can hit quick and hard when he wants to, and I have to keep him tied up all the time to keep him from killing the other bucks." Now, I know not what conclusion others will draw from the above clear and straightforward recital, but to me it established in _Ovis nelsoni_ a reputation for quick thinking, original reasoning and sound conclusions. In an incredibly short period those animals came up to the status of tame animals. The five sheep caught by Mr. Frakes were suddenly confronted by new conditions, such as their ancestors had never even dreamed of meeting; and _all of them reacted in the same way._ That was more than "animal behavior." It was Thought, and Reason!