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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