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THE AMEKICAN BISONS. 



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portions of the animal are quite or nearly naked. The shoulders retain per- 

 manentlj their long shaggy coverings which with the long hair of the neck 

 and head gives them^ especially during the moulting season^ a singularly 

 formidable aspect. 



The female^ as already stated^ is much smaller than the male, with a less 

 elevated hump^ much smaller, slenderer, and more curved horns, less heavily 

 developed beard, less shaggy head, etc. 5 but presents no essential differences 

 in color. 



Albinism and Melanism. — Vied individuals are occasionally met with but 

 they are of rare occurrence.* I have seen but a single specimen, the head 

 of which, finely mounted, is now in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. 

 I obtained it of hunters at Fort Hays, Kansas, near which place it was taken 

 in 1870, where it was regarded as a great curiosity. In this specimen, a female, 

 the whole face, from between the horns to the muzzle, is pure white, but in 

 other respects does not differ from ordinary examples. White individuals 

 are still more rare, but are not unknown. A former agent of the American 

 Fur Company, who had had unusually favorable opportunities of judging, 

 informed me that they probably occur in the proportion of not more than 

 one in millions, he having seen but five in an experience of twenty years, 

 although he had met with hundreds of pied ones. Black ones are rather 

 more frequent, but can only be regarded as very rare. The fm^ of these is 

 usually much softer and finer than that of ordinary individuals, and black 

 robes, from this fact and their great rarity, bring a very large price. They 

 seem to be more frequent at the northward than elsewhere. 



Varieties, — There are two commonly recognized varieties of the buffo 

 known respectively as the tvood hiiffalo and the mountain Uffalo, The wood buf- 

 falo is described by Hind f as larger than the common bison of the plains, 



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with very short soft pelage and soft short uncurled mane, thus more resembling 

 in these points the Lithuanian bison or aurochs. It is said to be very scarce, 

 and to be found only north of the Saskatchewan and along the flanks of the 

 Eocky Mountains, and to never venture into the plains. A supposed variety 

 of the bison, referred to by some of the northern voyagers as occurring north 

 of Great Slave Lake, and known only from vague rumors current among the 

 natives, is in all probability the musk-ox {Ovibos moschatus). 



The mountain bison, so often referred to by hunters and mountaineers as a 



* See Long's Expedition to the Kooky Mts., YoL I, p. 471. 



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Y.), Nar. of Canadian Red Kiver Explor. Exped., etc., Vol 11^ pp. 106, 107, 1860, 



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