JOURNALS OF ANDREW J. STONE
Expeditions to Arctic and Subarctic America after Wild Sheep, Grizzly, Caribou, and Muskoxen 1896-1903.
by R Margaret Frisina. 428pp.
New York City was abuzz on 3 April 1903; Andrew J. Stone, world-renowned Arctic explorer and hunter-naturalist, was fêted with a dinner/reception at the American Museum of Natural History. The East Mammal Hall was festooned with many specimens obtained by Stone on his three major expeditions into British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska. While Stone was widely known and highly acclaimed in his time—one of the original members of the New York Explorers Club and tapped to make an expedition to the North Pole via the Northwest Passage—within a few years his amazing legacy faded into the shadows as the world’s attention was consumed by international conflict.
Today Stone is most widely known by hunters—sheep hunters in particular—as the man who in 1896 obtained a specimen of the “black sheep.” This sheep was subsequently named Stone sheep (Ovis dalli stonei) in honor of his fieldwork in this animal’s natural history. It was Stone who established that Dall and Stone sheep are distinct populations. With Theodore Roosevelt, Stone coauthored The Deer Family. Fortunately, Stone kept a series of journals during his travels from 1896 through 1903 in which he recorded his struggles against raging blizzards, hostile natives, daunting physical risks, and mind-warping loneliness and boredom.
