THE MAMMALIA OF CANADA. 71 



seen by the writer near the Red Deer River in 1884, A few 

 are still in existence in the basin of the Mackenzie River, and 

 these which never migrate to the south, have come to be 

 known as Wood Bnifalo. With reo-ard to these, Mr. Kinor 

 the Hudson's Bay officer who is now in charge of Fort Pelly, 

 but who till very lately has lived in the Peace and Mac- 

 kenzie Rivers District, kindly furnished me witli the fol- 

 lowing notes, stating at the same time that he had seen 

 many of them. The animals will average two hundred 

 pounds heavier than their prairie cousins and their hair is 

 darker and thicker. When the Wood Buffalo were abun- 

 dant in the Peace River country, the Prairie Buffalo were 

 also very abundant. They lived in the open poplar woods 

 outside the limits of the true forest, a style of countrj^ that is 

 especially common throughout the North-West Territory. At 

 present there are two bands known to be in existence. One 

 band of about live hundred lives on what is locally known as 

 the "Salt Plain" which is a prairie from tive to twenty miles 

 wide, stretching for five hundred miles south-westward from 

 the vicinity of Fort Smith on the Slave River to the foot of 

 the Rocky Mountains. Another band of about a iiundred is 

 roaming on a smaller prairie lying to the south-east of Fort 

 McMurray between the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers. Mr. 

 King states that the two forms are very easily distinguished. 

 Mr. Campbell, however, the Hudson's B ly officer who 

 first established forts on the Yukon River, informed me that 

 it was often impossible to distinguish what was known as 

 the Wood Buffalo from the Prairie Buffalo. 



CARNIVORA. 

 Felts concolor, Linn. 



Cougar. Panther. Puma. Mountain Lion. 

 Mista-pi-sioo (big cat). Cree. 

 Found in rough wooded regions in southern Quebec, the 

 Rocky Mountains, British Columbia, and Vancouver Island. 



