A fully adult male mountain goat stands from 39 to 41 inches in shoulder height, and weighs, _on scales_, from 258 to 300 pounds.
The Prong-Horned Antelope, (_Antilocapra americana_), is an animal in which Americans should now take special interest. Structurally, the Prong-Horn is so peculiar that it has been found necessary to create for it a special zoological family, called _Antilocapridae_, of which it is the sole member. This is due to the following facts: (1) This is the only living mammal possessing hollow horns (growing over a bony core) which sheds them annually; (2) it is the only animal possessing a hollow horn which bears a prong, or bifurcation; (3) it has no "dew claws," as other ruminant animals have; (4) the horn is placed directly above the eye; (5) the long hair of the body and neck is tubular; and (6) that on the rump is erectile. Beyond all possibility of doubt, it will be our next large species to become extinct, and if we may judge by the rate at which the bands have been disappearing during the last fifteen years, ten years more will, in all probability, witness the extermination of the last individuals now struggling to exist outside of rigidly protected areas. It was the intention of the Society to make liberal provision for the study of the species while it is yet possible to obtain living specimens, for fifty years hence our graceful and zoologically interesting Prong-Horn will be as extinct as the dodo. Unfortunately, however, it fares so badly on the Atlantic coast, there will, no doubt, be periods wherein this species will be temporarily absent from the Park.
[Illustration: AMERICAN PRONG HORNED ANTELOPE.]
Forty years ago this animal inhabited practically the whole of the great pasture region which stretches eastward from the Rocky Mountains to the western borders of Iowa and Missouri. Northward its range extended far into Manitoba; southward it went far beyond the Rio Grande, and it also ranged southwestward through Colorado and Nevada to southern California. Its chosen home was the treeless plains, where the rich buffalo grass and bunch grass afforded abundant food, but it also frequented the beautiful mountain parks of Wyoming and Colorado. It even lived contentedly in the deserts of the southwest, where its voluntary presence, coupled with the absence of water, constituted a problem which has puzzled the brain of many a desert traveller.