American Bison 83 



Distribution. — Starting from Pennsylvania, which formed its eastern 

 Hmits, the American bison, according to Mr. Hornaday, originally " ex- 

 tended westward, through a vast tract ot dense forest across the Alleghany 

 Mountain system to the prairies along the Mississippi, and southward to 

 the delta of that great system. Although the great plain country of 

 the west was the natural home of the species, where it flourished most 

 abundantly, it also wandered south across Texas to the burning plains of 

 north-eastern Mexico, westward across the Rocky Mountains into New 

 Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, and northward across a vast treeless waste to 

 the bleak and inhospitable shores of the Great Slave Lake itself" To the 

 northward of the United States the western limits of its range appear to 

 have been formed by the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, along the 

 flanks of which it extended to the Mackenzie river ; and the northern 

 shore of the Great Slave Lake seems to have been its most northerly limit. 

 In British territory its easterly range did not extend beyond the plains 

 lying to the west of the highlands bordering Hudson Bay, so that it was 

 entirely absent from the region north of the great lakes. 



It will be noticed that in the passage quoted above the bison ot the 

 plains is regarded as the original form. This, however, as will be subse- 

 quently mentioned, is an error, the woodland form being doubtless nearer 

 the primitive type. Regarding the eastern extension ot the animal in 

 Pennsylvania, it is known to have ranged as far as Lewisburg within a 

 comparatively late period, the last individual having been killed in Buffalo 

 Valley, near that town, sometime between 1790 and 1800. Farther east, 

 the bison, according to Mr. S. N. Rhoads, had probably been driven 

 from the Delaware Valley considerably before the advent of the white 

 man in the New World. The same writer adds that, " from the scarcity 

 of its remains and the absence of reliable tradition of its presence in this 

 locality, it is unlikely that this species was ever more than a straggler in 

 the regions east of the Susquehanna river drainage." 



