90 ORIGIN AND TRANSFER OF DOMESTIC QUADRUPEDS. 
According to the census of the United States for 1870,* the 
total number of horses in all the States of the American Union, 
was, in round numbers, 7,100,000 ; of asses and mules, 1,100,000; 
of the ox tribe, 25,000,000; of sheep, 28,000,000; and of 
swine, 25,000,000. The only indigenous North American 
quadruped sufficiently gregarious in habits, and sufliciently 
multiplied in numbers, to form really large herds, is the bison, 
or, as he is commonly called in America, the buffalo; and 
this animal is confined to the prairie region of the Mississippi 
basin, a small part of British America, and Northern Mexico. 
The engineers sent out to survey railroad routes to the Pacitic 
estimated the number of a single herd of bisons seen within 
the last fifteen years on the great plains near the Upper Mis- 
sourl, at not less than 200,000, and yet the range occupied by 
this animal is now very much smaller in area than it was when 
the whites first established themselves on the prairies.t But it 
must be remarked that the American buffalo is a migratory 
animal, and that, at the season of his annual journeys, the whole 
stock of a vast extent of pasture-ground is collected into a single 
army, which is seen at or very near any one point only fora 
few days during the entire season. Jence there is risk of great 
* In the enumeration of farm stock, ‘‘sucking pigs, spring lambs, and 
calves,” are omitted. I believe they are included in the numbers reported by the 
census of 1860. Horses and horned cattle in towns and cities were excluded 
from both enumerations, the law providing for returns on these points from 
rural districts only. On the whole, there is a diminution in the number of all 
farm stock, except sheep, since 1860. This is ascribed by the Report to the 
destruction of domestic quadrupeds during the civil war, but this hardly ex- 
plains the reduction in the number of swine from 389,000,000 in 1860 to 
25,000,000 in 1870. 
+ ‘‘ About five miles from camp we ascended to the top of a high hill, and 
for a great distance ahead every square mile seemed to have a herd of buffalo 
upon it. Their number was variously estimated by the members of the party ; 
by some as high as half a million. I do not think it any exaggeration to set 
it down at 200,000."—StEvENs’s Warrative and Final Report. teports of Ex- 
plorations and Surveys for Railroad to Pacific, vol. xii., book i., 1860. 
The next day the party fell in with a “‘ buffalo trail,” where at least 100,000 
were thought to have crossed a slough. 
As late as 1868, Sheridan’s party estimated the number of bisons seen by them 
in a single day at 200,000.—Sheridan’s Troopers on the Border, 1868, p. 41. 
