The Yellowstone Park 



most familiar with their haunts and habits. 

 They wander about in small bands in such 

 unfrequented country as the southern end of 

 the Madison plateau, the Mirror plateau, and 

 the head of Pelican Creek, and on the borders 

 of that elevated table-land known as Elephant 

 Back. In winter, leaving the forest, they 

 feed over the slopes of Specimen Ridge, and 

 in the open Hayden Valley. 



It is not likely that there ever were 

 many buffalo in the Park, or that those there 

 ever suffered seriously from the hand of man 

 other than the Indian. Up to within recent 

 years the plains buffalo offered a more attrac- 

 tive field for the hunter nearer home. Their 

 abodes in the Park were inaccessible and far 

 away from any base of supplies. Only since 

 their extermination from the plains and the 

 advance of settlements to the Park border 

 have inroads upon their numbers taken 

 place. If they ever roamed over this country 

 in large herds, evidence of the fact should be 

 apparent by well-trodden buffalo trails, which 

 nowhere form a feature of the Park plateau. 

 Whether the natural increase in their num- 

 bers has been kept down by the severity of the 

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