78o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



weight of its carcass exceeds that of a buffalo's, while the meat is 

 better. Such a carcass has been known to weigh as much as 

 1,100 pounds net. Its robe is much more valuable than the 

 buffalo's ; for its fur, instead of being chiefly bunched at the 



Fig. 2.— Theee-quarter-Blood Buffaloes. Cross between Buffalo Bull and Half-blood 

 Buffalo Cow. 



mane, is evenly distributed over the hide, and is much finer in 

 quality — its present value being from $50 to $75. A buffalo 

 crossed with a half-bred cow produces an animal quite as hardy 

 as its sire, but not quite so large. Experiments of much interest 

 are in progress with various strains of domestic cattle, the out- 

 come promising to be perhaps only less important than the origi- 

 nal domestication, and subsequent molding, of horses and cattle 

 from their primitive wild forms. 



Chief among the ranches where the domestication of the buf- 

 falo is taking place and its crosses are being bred is that of Mr. 

 C. J. Jones, at Garden City, Kan. The nucleus of his herd, seven 

 calves and fifteen adult buffaloes, were run down by him on the 

 Texan plains, two to three hundred miles from Garden City. He 

 has crossed Texan cows with buffalo bulls, and obtained excellent 

 results. In November last he acquired a herd of eighty-three 

 animals from Mr. Samuel L. Bedson, of Stony Mountain, sixteen 

 miles from Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba. The crosses in 

 this herd were from Galloway or polled Angus cattle ; they are 

 much superior to those from Texan strains, and are presented in 

 the accompanying illustrations. Mr. Bedson's herd dated from 

 1877, when he first corraled a buffalo bull and four heifers. These 

 five animals were part of the small remnant grazing in the vast 

 region between the Saskatchewan River and the international 

 boundary, the region now traversed by the Canadian Pacific 

 Railway. In that immense plain the slaughter of buffaloes, due 

 to the trafiic of the Hudson's Bay Company, had been for two 



