-^'LIBRARI 



THE OTTAWA NATURALIST. 



Vol. XII. 



OTTAWA, JULY, 1898. 



No. 4. 



THE VANISHED BUFFALO. 



By Prof. Edward E. Prince, 

 Dominion Commissioner of Eisheiies. 



It is hardly possible for the thoughtful traveller to cross 

 the prairies of Western Canada without some reflections on the 

 vanished buffalo. That these apparently interminable plains, 

 now so silent and destitute of animal life, were once the pasture 

 ground for incrediblv vast herds of bison or American buffalo 

 {Bos aniericaiius) can scarcely be realised. For fully a couple 

 of da}'s the Pacific express speeds across this treeless waste, 

 clothed with brown grass except in summer when it is carpeted 

 wMth the strange flowers peculiar to these monotonous plains.. 

 In every direction the flat waste melts in the blue distance like 

 the sea in mid-ocean but no sign of life appears except a few 

 birds, and that ubiquitous prairie rodent, the gopher. Herds of 

 domestic cattle, the property of isolated ranchers, roam at will ; 

 but an occasional cayote or prairie \^o\{ {Canis latrans, Sayj, a 

 startled badger {Taxidea avierzcana, Bod.), or a fevv antelope. 

 (Antilocapra aniericanus, Ord.^ may be seen hastening away 

 from the railway track. 



It is fully twenty years ago since the buffalo in any con- 

 siderable numbers were found on the plains. In 1884 out of a 

 herd of twenty, eleven or twelve were killed in the vicinity of 

 Cypress Hills not far from Maple Creek, and so recently as eight 

 years ago a small herd of six or seven cows and calves was 

 killed by Indians a little north of Swift Current, Assiniboia, 

 N. W. T., these being probably the remnant of the Cypress Hills 

 buffalo. In the early part of 1886 the Smithsonian expedition 

 scoured Montana with the hope, a very meagre one, of finding 



