260 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



30 acres of such range to support an ordinary range beast, which 

 needs as much as, or more than, a Buffalo. There were as many 

 of the latter as the food could sustain; therefore the Plains 

 had 30,000,000, but take off one-third to allow for the herds 

 of other creatures, and we have 20,000,000 as the number 

 of the Plains Buffalo. On the prairies and in the woods 

 10 acres a head is the usual range allowance; but doubling this 

 to allow for Deer, etc., it would give us a population of 45,000,- 

 000, or a total of 65,000,000 Buffalo. 



Again: Col. C. J.Jones estimated ^^ the Buffalo in 1870 

 at 14,000,000. They were then occupying less than one-third 

 of their range and were not nearly so crowded as in ancient 

 times; their original total, therefore, must have been at least 

 50,000,000. 



Yet again: All the evidence available goes to show that 

 the Buffalo herds travelled from 100 to 400 miles in search of 

 food; and that these herds broke speedily to find sustenance, 

 and therefore that the herds never went more than 300 or 400 

 miles from their home-region. Hornaday estimates^^ at 4,000,- 

 000 a herd which Colonel Dodge saw" travelling on the Arkan- 

 sas in May, 1871. If this herd had been gathered from the 

 extreme distance from which they are known to congregate, 

 it would represent an area of 200,000 square miles. There 

 would be room enough to repeat this about 15 times on their 

 range, and thus yield a population of about 60,000,000 as the 

 sum of the Buffalo in primitive days, when their whole range 

 was stocked as fully as the food-supply would permit. From 

 these facts it will appear very safe to put the primitive Buffalo 

 population at 50,000,000 to 60,000,000. 



In 1800 there were practically no Buffalo east of the 

 Mississippi. Their range had shrunken by one-eighth; their 

 numbers doubtless shrunk in even greater degree; 40,000,000 

 head would be a fair estimate at that time. 



The Duke of Bedford's herd of Buffalo at Woburn Abbey 



*^ Forty years of Adv., 1899, p. 255. '^* Ext. Am. Bison, 1889, p. 391. 



'^ Plains of Gt. West., p. 120. 



