AO THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
variety or perhaps a distinct species, seems to agree in all essential particu- 
lars with the so-called wood bison of the region farther north. The same 
characters of larger size, darker, shorter and softer pelage, are usually attrib- 
uted to it, but one meets with such different, exaggerated, and contra- 
dictory accounts of its distinctive features from different observers that it is 
almost impossible to believe in its existence, except in the imaginations 
of the hunter and adventurer. I have found that those actually conversant 
with it, and whose opinions in general matters are most entitled to respect, 
regard it as but slightly or not at all different from the bison of the plains. 
Others who know it only from hearsay, and whose notions of it are conse- 
quently vague, generally magnify its supposed differences, till some do not 
hesitate to declare their belief in it as a specifically distinct animal from 
the common bison of the plains.* Dr. Cooper, speaking of the bisons 
found formerly in the mountain valleys about the sources of the Snake 
River, says he “saw no difference in the skulls, indicating a different 
species, or ‘mountain buffalo’ of hunters.”+ The bisons formerly living 
in the parks and valleys of the central portion of the Rocky Mountain 
chain doubtless did often grow to a larger size than those of the plains, 
with rather larger horns, and, being less subjected to the bleaching 
effects of the elements in their partially wooded retreats, would natu- 
rally have a darker and perhaps softer pelage. The weathered bison 
skulls I met with in 1871 in the upper part of South Park and in the 
vicinity of the tree-limit in the Snowy Range of Colorado were certainly 
larger, in the average, by actual measurement, than those of the Kansas 
plains. The small bands now lingering here and there in the mountains, and 
now currently known as the mountain buffalo, may be in part the remnants 
of a former larger mountain form, but certainly a part of them are actually 
recent migrants from the plains. In 18711 was able to trace the migration 
of a small band up the valley of the South Platte and across South Park to the 
vicinity of the so-called Buffalo Spring, situated considerably to the south- 
ward of Fairplay. Specimens of the “mountain bison”’ sent in a fresh state 
from Colorado to the Smithsonian Institution during the present winter (De- 
cember, 1875) certainly presented no appreciable differences from winter 
specimens from the plains. The mountain race of the bison was appar- 
ently a little larger than the buffalo of the plains, and doubtless was nearly 
identical with the race known farther northward as the “wood buffalo.” 
* See Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol. VI, p. 55, 1874. 
+ Amer. Nat., Vol. II, p. 538, 1868. 
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