44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with the domestic cattle. The half-breeds are large, fine animals, pos- 

 sessing most of the characteristics of their wild parentage. They can 

 be broken to the yoke, but are not so sober and manageable in their 

 work as the tame breed sometimes, for instance, making a dash for 

 the nearest water, with disastrous results to the load they are drawing. 

 It is somewhat difficult, also, to make a fence which shall resist the de- 

 structive strength of their head and horns. But the efforts at taming 

 buffaloes have not been many or seriously carried on, and no attempt 

 appears to have been made to perpetuate an unmixed domestic race. 

 Probably after a few generations they would lose their natural un- 

 tractableness, and when castrated would doubtless form superior work- 

 ing-cattle, from their greater size, strength, and natural agility. 



" The fate of extermination so surely awaits, sooner or later, the buf- 

 falo in its wild state, that its domestication becomes a matter of great 

 interest, and is well worthy the attention of intelligent stock-growers, 

 some of whom should be willing to take a little trouble to perpetuate 

 the pure race in a domestic state. The attempt can be hardly regarded 

 otherwise than as an enterprise that would eventually yield a satisfac- 

 tory and profitable result, with the possibility of adding another val- 

 uable domestic animal to those we now possess." 



The precise limit of the range of the buffalo when the first Euro- 

 peans visited America is still a matter of uncertainty, yet its bounda- 

 ries at that time can be established with tolerable exactness. It was 

 beyond doubt almost exclusively an animal of the prairies and the 

 woodless plains, ranging only to a limited extent into the forested dis- 

 tricts east of the Mississippi River. The results of the present exhaus- 

 tive inquiries seem to show that its extension to the northward, east 

 of the Mississippi, was limited by the Great Lakes. Contrary to the 

 supposition of several recent writers, Mr. Allen has not been able to 

 find a single mention of its occurrence within the present limits of 

 Canada, New England, or New York State, although the name of the 

 city of Buffalo and the neighboring " Buffalo Creek " probably imply 

 that this animal once extended its travels to that point. All the sup- 

 posed references to its being seen on the St. Lawrence, or in Canada 

 West, turn out to mean the elk the same indefinite terms being often 

 used for both by early writers or else to apply to some part of the 

 broad territory then called Canada, but not now included within its 

 limits. Changes in political boundaries have constantly to be borne 

 in mind in studying ancient narratives. 



Furthermore, no remains of the bison have been found among the 

 bones in the shell-heaps along the Atlantic coast, and there is no un- 

 questionable evidence, among all the early lists of the natural products 

 of the country, of its occurrence anywhere on the seaboard north of 

 the Potomac for a long period antedating the discovery of the con- 

 tinent by Europeans. The only well-authenticated instances of its 

 being found east of the Blue Ridge are the apparently casual passage 



