296 UNGULATA. 



the climate in the different latitudes. The limits within 

 which they are found in America, are from the thirtieth 

 degree to the fifty-fifth degree of North latitude ; and 

 their extent from East to West, which is from the 

 border of our extreme Western frontier limits to the 

 Western verge of the Rocky Mountains, is defined by 

 quite different causes than those which the degrees of 

 temperature have prescribed to them on the North and 

 the South. Within these twenty-five degrees of latitude 

 the Buffaloes seem to flourish, and get their living with- 

 out the necessity of evading the rigour of the climate 

 for which Nature seems most wisely to have prepared 

 them by the greater or less profusion of fur with which 

 she has clothed them. 



"It is very evident that as high North as Lake 

 Winnipeg, seven or eight hundred miles North of this, 

 the Buffalo subsists itself through the severest winters ; 

 getting its food chiefly by browsing amongst the timber, 

 and by pawing through the snow for a bite at the grass, 

 which in those regions is frozen up very suddenly in the 

 beginning of the w^inter, with all its Juices in it, and 

 consequently furnishes very nutritious and efficient 

 food ; and often, if not generally, supporting the animal 

 in better flesh during these difficult seasons of their 

 lives than they are found to be in, in the thirtieth degree 

 of latitude, upon the borders of Mexico, where the 

 severity of winter is not known, but during a long and 

 tedious autumn the herbage, under the influence of a 

 burning sun, is gradually dried away to a mere husk, 

 and its nutriment gone, leaving these poor creatures, 

 even in the dead of winter, to bask in the warmth of a 

 genial sun, without the benefit of a green or juicy thing 

 to bite at. 



" The place from which I am now writing may be 



