There is no reason whatever to believe that the limits of the distribution of the white goat were ever much different from what they are now, except in outlying localities along their southern limits. The center of the greatest abundance of goat appears to be in the coast ranges in British Columbia and southern Alaska and it is here that they are found low down the mountain sides and often close to salt water. COMPARISON WITH SHEEP. It is due to ignorance of the character of the country inhabited by mountain goat that so much has been written about an alleged antipathy between _Oreamnos_ and the mountain sheep. It is singular that writers should go so far afield as to conjure up an imaginary mutual hatred to account for the undoubted fact that sheep and goat seldom live together. In some places, however, notably the Schesley Mountains, sheep and goat can be found on the same mountain side. Sheep belong to the rugged hills and lower slopes and at one time ranged far eastward into the plains wherever the character of the country was at all rough, as in the Black Hills and in the Bad Lands of the upper Missouri. The sheep is furthermore, a grass-eating animal, while the goat is a browser, finding his food mainly on the buds and twigs of the forests that grow to the very foot of the goat rocks. All through the goat country occur patches of forest and it is there that the goat is found, between timber-line and the snow fields. So far as we know the only grazing done by the goat, beyond nibbling at small plants, is on the slides when the grass first appears and it is probable that to this habit the greatest mortality of this animal is due, as many are killed each spring by the avalanches on these snow slides. [Illustration: TWO GOAT KIDS AND MOUNTAIN SHEEP LAMB, BORN IN THE SPRING OF 1904 CAPTURED NEAR FORT STEELE, BRITISH COLUMBIA. Now living and on exhibition in the New York Zoological Park.] The sheep is an active, wary and fleet-footed animal, fully as well equipped as the deer to escape by agility from its enemies and is not dependent for safety on a refuge beyond the reach of other animals. The goat on the other hand, is heavy, powerful, clumsy, slow moving and somewhat stupid and does not dare to venture very far from its inaccessible rocks. It thrives among precipitous cliffs, which are everywhere known among hunters as "goat rocks" and are recognizable as such at a glance. LOCAL DISTRIBUTION.