oer 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. 61 
Doubtless the same individuals never moved more than a few hundred miles 
in a north and south direction, the annual migration being doubtless merely 
a moderate swaying northward and southward of the whole mass with the 
changes of the seasons. We certainly know that buffaloes have been accus- 
tomed to remain in winter as far north as their habitat extends. North of 
the Saskatchewan they are described as merely leaving the more exposed 
portions of the plains during the deepest snows and severest periods of cold 
to take shelter in the open woods that border the plains. We have, for in- 
stance, numerous attestations of their former abundance in winter at Carleton 
House, in latitude 63°, as well as at other of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 
posts. 
The local movements of the buffaloes are said to have been formerly very 
regular, and the hunters conversant with their habits knew very well at 
what points they were most likely to find them at the different seasons of 
the year. Of late, however, the buffaloes have become much more erratic, 
owing to the constant persecutions to which they have been for so long a 
time subjected. In Northern Kansas the old trails show that their move- 
ments were formerly in the usual north and south direction, the trails all 
having that course. Since the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railway, 
however, their habits have considerably changed, an east and west migration 
having recently prevailed to such an extent that a new set of trails, ronning 
at right angles to the earlier, have been deeply worn. Until recently the 
-buffaloes ranged eastward in summer to Fort Harker, but retired westward 
in winter, few being found at this season east of Fort Hays. In summer 
and early autumn, hunting-parties, as late as 1872, made their headquarters 
at Hays City; later in the season at Ellis and Park’s Fort; while in mid- 
winter they had to move their camps as far west as Coyote, Grinnell, and 
Wallace, or to a distance of one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles west 
of their fall camps, in consequence of the westward winter migration of the 
buffaloes. Two reasons may be assigned for this change of habit : first, their 
reluctance to cross the railroad, and secondly, the greater mildness of the win- 
ters to the westward of Ellis as compared with the region east of this point. 
During the winter of 1871-72 I found that for a period of several weeks, 
in December and January, the country east of Ellis was covered with ice 
and encrusted snow sufficiently deep to bury the grass below the reach of 
either the buffaloes or the domestic cattle. In the vicinity of Ellis the 
amount of snow and ice began rapidly to diminish, while a little further 
