120 ae AMERICAN BISONS. 
period, since their skulls occur wholly buried in the marshes about the 
lake, where the deposition appears to have been quite slow. I am also 
informed by Mr. H. W. Henshaw, the well-known ornithologist of Lieuten- 
ant Wheeler’s Survey, that their skulls have been found in Utah Lake. 
Mr. Henshaw, under date of eek D. C., March 6, 1875, writes as 
follows : — 
“The only information I have regarding its [the buffalo’s] presence in Utah 
was derived from Mr. Madsen, a Danish fisherman, living on the borders of 
Utah Lake; and, I may add, I am perfectly convinced of the trustworthi- 
ness of his statement. In using the seine in the waters of the lake, he has 
on several occasions brought up from the bottom the skulls of buffaloes, in a 
very good state of preservation. Their presence in the lake may perhaps 
be accounted for on the supposition that, in crossing on the ice, a herd may 
at some time have broken through, and thus perished. From him I also 
learned that he had talked with Indians of middle age whose fathers had 
told them that in their time the buffaloes were numerous, and that they had 
hunted them near the lake. If this can be accepted as truth, it would place 
the existence of these animals in Utah back to a not very distant date. I 
learn from my friend, W. W. Howell, that during the past season he obtained 
the cranium of a buffalo, which was unearthed by some laborers while dig- 
ging a mill-race, at a depth of ten feet below the surface. This was in a 
broad cation near Gunnison. While, from the fact of its being in a caiion, no 
very exact estimate can be made of the time of its deposit, there seemed 
every evidence that the soil above it had remained undisturbed for a long 
time. The lower portion of the cranium is gone, leaving the part above the 
orbits, and the horn-cores, intact and in an excellent state of preservation. 
A comparison of this with a recent specimen of the B. americanus shows that 
in certain characters it exhibits an approach to the Bison /atifrons, as described 
by Leidy. In size it varies little from the B. americanus, but in all other 
characteristics is much nearer the B. dutifrons.” * 
The buffalo seems, however, to have lingered later on the head-waters of 
the Colorado than in either the Great Salt Lake Valley, or the valley of Bear 
River, or on the head-waters of the two main forks of the Columbia. Fré- 
mont found them on St. Vrain’s Fork of Green River, and on the Vermilion 
in 1844,f and Stansbury, in 1849, found them on the northern tributaries of 
* Tts agreement in size with Bison americanus is sufficient to indicate its identity with that species. 
+ First and Second Expeditions, etc., p. 281. 
