10 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
jecture that the buffalo to which it belonged was about ten or eleven feet 
high.” * 
The least breadth of the forehead (at the narrowest point between the 
orbits and horn-cores) is fifteen inches, or about two inches greater than the 
corresponding measurement of old males of Bison americanus. The occipital 
condyles show that the skull would require an atlas having an articular cup 
with a transverse axis of not less than seven and a half to eight inches, or 
more than two inches (more than one third) greater than that of the fossil 
atlas from Darien, Georgia, doubtfully referred by Dr. Leidy to Bison latyfrons. 
If referable to that species it must be considered as having belonged to a 
female, the skull above described being undoubtedly that of a male. 
The second skull referable to Bison latifrons is that described by Dr. Car- 
penter from the banks of the Brazos River, near San Felipe, Texas. Dr. 
Carpenter’s description is as follows : — 
“ Fossil Ox.—This specimen consists of the frontal bone, with portions of 
the bony nuclei of the horns. The frontal portion of the orbit of one eye 
is nearly entire; the margins of the other are broken. None of the bones 
of the lower portions of the head are left, being replaced by a conglomerate 
mass of sand and pebbles. ... . The frontal bone is nearly plane ante- 
riorly, and the horns arise laterally from a level with this plane; but the 
bone bulges about two and one half inches in the occipital portion above the 
horns, as shown in the figure.” The figure is a rude wood-cut, representing 
the specimen “ one sixteenth its linear dimensions.” 
According to Dr. Carpenter’s measurements this specimen nearly equalled 
in size the one described by Dr. Leidy. The circumference of the horn-cores 
at the base was seventeen inches, or about three and a half inches less, if 
measured actually around the base of the horn-core and not around the neck 
of the horn-core. This measurement in Dr. Leidy’s specimen is only eighteen 
inches, or one inch greater than the measurement given by Dr. Carpenter. 
The circumference of the horn-core of Carpenter’s specimen, at the distance 
of eighteen inches from the base, is given as fourteen and a half inches, 
which indicates a size at this point fully as great as Dr. Leidy’s specimen 
could have had. In Dr. Carpenter's specimen considerable portions of the 
horn-cores were still attached to the skull, namely, eighteen inches of the left 
horn-core and two feet of the right horn-core. “The bones of the horns,” 
says Dr. Carpenter, “are nearly round, and they have a slight curvature 
* Historical Disquisition on the Mammoth, etc., pp. 84, 85. 
