G4. THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
periods of their journeys. When no reference whatever is made to the buf 
falo in the narratives of different travellers who passed at different times 
over the same region, it has been assumed, i in the total absence also of all 
other evidence to the contrary, that the buffalo did not, during that period 
at least, exist over the special area in question. 
The use of the term vaches sauvages by many of the early French Jesuit 
writers, and that of wild cows by some of the early English explorers, and 
also the terms buffe, buffe, and bauf sauvage, for the designation of the moose 
(Ales malchis) and the elk (Cervus canadensis) as well as the buffalo, has 
resulted in erroneous conclusions in respect to the former range of the 
buffalo. Difficulties have also often arisen in respect to the identification 
of localities from the fact that the names of rivers, lakes, etc., were often dif- 
ferently applied by different writers, and were frequently entirely different 
from those now employed to designate the same landmarks. Care, however, 
has been taken to trace out, in such cases, the modern equivalents of the 
older geographical names. 
For convenience of treatment the former supposed habitat of the buffalo 
is divided into several districts, which are treated separately in what has 
seemed to be their most natural order. 
Tue Eastern BounpARY OF THE FORMER HABITAT OF THE BUFFALO 
CONSIDERED, INCLUDING AN EXAMINATION OF THE ALLEGED EVIDENCE 
or irs OccurrENCE IN New ENGLAND, THE CANADAS, THE MARITIME 
parts or tHE Mrippiz Srares, VIRGINIA, THE CAROLINAS, AND 
FLORIDA. 
As already stated, many prominent authorities have regarded the range 
of the buffalo as formerly extending eastward to the Atlantic Coast, including 
the Middle States, and even portions of New England and the Canadas, while 
others seem to have had no doubt of its former existence from New York along 
the seaboard to Florida. Its former occurrence in the western parts of North 
and South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, is established. be- 
yond question; but its presence elsewhere on the Atlantic slope is highly 
questionable. Dr. Richardson, writing in 1829, says: “At the period when 
Europeans began to form settlements in North America this animal was occa- 
sionally met with on the Atlantic Coast,” etc.* De Kay, writing in 1842, 
* Richardson, Faun. Bor. Americana, Vol. I, p. 279, 1829. 
