THE AMERICAN BISONS. 39 
portions of the animal are quite or nearly naked. The shoulders retain per- 
manently their long shaggy covering, which with the long hair of the neck 
and head gives them, especially during the moulting season, a singularly 
formidable aspect. 
The female, as already stated, is much smaller than the male, with a less 
elevated hump, much smaller, slenderer, and more curved horns, less heavily 
developed beard, less shaggy head, etc., but presents no essential differences 
in color. 
Albinism and Melanism.— Pied individuals are occasionally met with, but 
they are of rare occurrence.* I have seen but a single specimen, the head 
of which, finely mounted, is now in the Museum of Comparative Zodlogy. 
I obtained it of hunters at Fort Hays, Kansas, near which place it was taken 
in 1870, where it was regarded as a great curiosity. In this specimen, a female, 
the whole face, from between the horns to the muzzle, is pure white, but in 
other respects does not differ from ordinary examples. White individuals 
are still more rare, but are not unknown. A former agent of the American 
Fur Company, who had had unusually favorable opportunities of judging, 
informed me that they probably occur in the proportion of not more than 
one in millions, he having seen but five in an experience of twenty years, 
although he had met with hundreds of pied ones. Black ones are rather 
more frequent, but can only be regarded as very rare. The fur of these is 
usually much softer and finer than that of ordinary individuals, and black 
robes, from this fact and their great rarity, bring a very large price. They 
seem to be more frequent at the northward than elsewhere. 
Varieties. — There are two commonly recognized varieties of the buffalo, 
known respectively as the wood buffalo and the mountain buffalo. The wood buf. 
falo is described by Hind f as larger than the common bison of the plains, 
with very short soft pelage and soft short uncurled mane, thus more resembling 
in these points the Lithuanian bison or aurochs. It is said to be very scarce, 
and to be found only north of the Saskatchewan and Along the flanks of the 
Rocky Mountains, and to never venture into the plains. A supposed variety 
of the bison, referred to by some of the northern voyagers as occurring north 
of Great Slave Lake, and known only from vague rumors current among the 
natives, is in all probability the musk-ox ( Ovibos moschatus). 
The mountain bison, so often referred to by hunters and mountaineers as a 
* See Long’s Expedition to the Rocky Mts., Vol. I, p. 471. 
+ Hind (H. Y.), Nar. of Canadian Red River Explor. Exped., etc., Vol. IL, pp. 106, 107, 1860. 
