THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 143 
d’ Amérique. Peter Kalm, who travelled through Amer- 
ica in 1749, spoke of them as wilde ochsen and hithe. But 
the word buffalo—at first spelled bugfelo—soon replaced the 
earlier names. Scientific men claim that our species (4zson 
americanus, Smith) should be called bison, as “ buffalo” is 
applicable only to the East Indian genus Lubalus. 
It appears that our bison has already outlived at least 
two other races, which exceeded it in size—the Bison lati- 
Jrons and the Bison antiquus. The former was contem- 
porary with the mastodon, and was an ox of gigantic bulk, 
the tips of whose horns were eleven or twelve feet apart, 
and which probably stood as high as an elephant. Of the 
latter species more abundant remains have been dug up, 
particularly from the ice-cliffs at Escholtz Bay, on the Are- 
tic coast north of Alaska. This fossil ox was of smaller 
size than the ison latifrons, but much larger than the ex- 
isting buffalo, although not greatly different from it in 
form. It seems to have been spread over the northwestern 
half of the continent from the Ohio Valley to Alaska, its 
remains occurring everywhere with those of the larger ex- 
tinct mammalia, yet it may have survived to a compara- 
tively regent date. 
With the appearance of the buffalo, which only a few 
decades ago swarmed in prodigious herds over nearly a 
