hundred miles further west in the latitude of the South Pass, where he extends as far as the cataracts of the Columbia. In that region the sage brush has a much further westerly extension than further south, -and the bird peculiarly belongs to this growth of vegetation. Thus far, to my knowledge, he has never been found west of the Cascade Range or the Sierra Nevada. In the spring, or about the time of snow melting, which of course varies at different heights and in different latitudes, the sage-hen builds in the bush her nest of sticks and reeds, quite artistically matted together, and lays from a dozen to twenty eggs, a trifle larger than the average of the domestic fowl, of a tawny color, irregularly marked with chocolate blotches on the larger end. Her period of incubation does not, I believe, differ much from that of the domestic hen. When the brood is large enough to travel, its parents lead it into general society. In July and August the flocks begin assembling, and by fall it is not unusual to meet bands of two or three hundred. I reached and crossed their habitat during the last week in June, and between Sage Creek and Salt Lake daily encountered flocks of a score or over. I know scarcely any animal whose range is more sharply defined. It is a rare thing to meet with them on the eastern flanks of the ridges belonging to the Rocky Mountain system; though while I was in Denver, my friend, the indefatigable naturalist Dr. Wernigk, brought back from an expedition into the South Park very fine specimens of both cock and hen. This fact, however, hardly constitutes an exception to the general rule, since South Park is but little over a degree further east than Sage Creek, and sheds a portion of its water to the west

by small affluents of the Grand Fork of Colorado, though most of its drainage is by the South Platte.

in

I never saw tamer wild fowl than the little troop of sage-chickens which we encountered on striking Sage Creek. I could hardly realize they were what they were, though I had a vividly correct image of them my mind from the stuffed specimens of Dr. Wernigk, and the admirable drawings of Baird's collection. As we wound along the brook margin, they strutted complacently between the gnarled trunks and ashen masses of foliage peculiar to the sage, paying scarcely more attention to us than a barn-yard drove of turkeys (whose motion theirs much resembles), the cocks now and then stopping to play the dandy before their more Quakerish little hens, inflating the yellow patches of skin on each side of their necks, by a peculiar air-syphon apparatus, until they globed out like the pouches of a pouter pigeon. As this was the first time I had seen them in their native haunts, and because their confidence quite disarmed me, I had no thought of shooting them, and had the driver slow his team to give our party a better opportunity of studying them. They continued dodging about the bushes not more than forty. feet from us, until we thoroughly familiarized ourselves with their manners; and acknowledged that although some others of the grouse tribe rejoiced in richer colors than they, they certainly bore away the palm in the exquisite symmetry of their markings, and the grace of their figures as well as their movements. Wishing to get nearer them for the purpose of seeing if any young ones were concealed in the brush (whose trunks, consisting each of a number of smaller stems united in a spiral twisted as tight as

any hawser, here measured everywhere the thickness of a man's thigh), I dismounted and quietly crept toward them. They did not take the alarm until I had got within twenty feet of them, and then went under cover with an air of dignified leisure. I suppose they knew by instinct that they had little to fear. Science and wantonness were their only enemies. I had. their whole country before me, and would not burden myself with specimens prematurely; I was not fond of destroying life merely for murder's sake, and none of our party were starving. To kill a sage-hen for supper demands either this last condition, or the stomach of an Indian; for, with this handsome grouse, beauty is preeminently but skin deep, the flesh of the bird, save in the youngest chickens, being a mess rather for the apothecary's shop than the kitchen. The sage-fowl not only live in the brush from which they get their name, but feed on it, as well as on the insects and smaller reptiles about its roots, thus acquiring a rank sage flavor which repeated parboilings followed by roasting cannot entirely eradicate. The wild sage has no connection with our garden variety, except through its . popular name and very unpopular taste, being, in fact, a wormwood (Artemisia tridentata), while our familiar pot-herb is the Salvia officinalis.

Sage Creek runs nearly due north and empties into a small nameless stream, which is the most westerly affluent of the North Platte, and which rises from the very summit of the water-shed penetrated by Bridger's Pass. After leaving Sage Creek we crossed two more anonymous rivulets which go to swell this affluent, on the way stopping at Pine Grove Station, twenty-four miles from the North Platte Crossing, to change horses.

Here we found, in the person of the station-keeper one of the finest specimens of the American hunter and fearless pioneer encountered in our whole journey. He was a splendidly built fellow, not more than twenty-two or three years old, six feet high, with an arm like a grizzly's paw, a fine, frank, fearless face, full of ruddy health and quenchless cheerfulness. There was a look of capability and resource about him which made it easy to understand how the wilds of our country are settled, its rocky fastnesses made to roar with the blast of the forge, and echo to the sound of axe and hammer. Set him beside one of our pale, puny Metropolitan counter-jumpers, and ask the inhabitant of another planet to label the two for the shelves of some anthropological cabinet: ten to one they would not be included in the same species, perhaps not in the same genus of animal life. The young station-keeper told us that he had a partner, but it was very rare for both of them to be at home together. He had now been alone for several days, taking care of the stock, while the other man was trapping and shooting equally alone in the mountains. When we asked him what game he hunted, he invited us into his cabin and pointed us to the walls for the shortest answer. The skins hung so thick that we could not see the logs. Among them were a number of full-sized grizzly robes, and a few pretty little cub-skins, very soft and silky, belonging to the same species; a cinnamon bear-skin, besides gray and white wolf-skins, fox-skins, deer-hides, and smaller peltry without stint, including the wolverine, an exquisitely marked tiger-cat, and the robe of a mountain lion. His cabinet of deer and elk horns would have brought hundreds of dollars, if offered to an

Eastern sportsman decorating his library. His taste in adornment was excellents the lady-love of a prince might have envied him his boudoir. All his skins were in excellent preservation. The only one that he had never been able to preserve was that of the antelope; and that animal must forever baffle the cabinet collector, for his hair differs from that of every quadruped but the porcupine. It is stiff and spongy; the gentlest pull brings out a bunch of it in one's fingers, and this bunch looks and feels like a bundle of short threads of spun glass. Where it is thickest, on the breast and about the haunches, it stands out like bristles radiating from a centre in the brush form, with concentric rings of coarse, brittle fibre arranged round it. I have never seen anything exactly like it in any other animal, and never in the antelope anything like the other ruminants' wool or hair. The fibres of the antelope pelt are sometimes so brittle that they break across as easily as the spun glass which they resemble. The skin is thus valueless for the fur trade or the cabinet, a fact which I have often regretted; for its appearance upon the animal, with the sunlight striking its tawny ground and snow-white patches, as it goes glancing down a bluff in the arrow-flight of a stampede, is very beautiful.

Among other trophies which interested me greatly, were the horns and skin of a "Bighorn," or Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis Montana), an animal which even in the heart of this savage region is practically rare, since, like the chamois, it frequents the most inaccessible fastnesses, and is never seen save by the hunter who devotes himself entirely to its pursuit. The wariest Indian often lies in wait for it for days