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72 



THE AMEEICAK BISOISTS. 





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Europeans visited America is still a matter of uncertainty, yet reliable data 

 are sufficiently abundant to establish the boundaries of its habitat at that 

 time with tolerable exactness. These data exist in the form of incidental 

 memoranda in the narratives of the' earlier explorers, rather than in formal 

 statements bearing directly upon the subject, and though often unsatisfacto- 

 rily vague in respect to dates and localities, they enable us to trace approxi- 

 mately the eastern and southern boundary of its habitat at a date as early at 

 least as the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was beyond doubt 

 almost exclusively an animal of the prairies and the w^oodless plains, ranging 

 only to a limited extent into the forested districts east of the Mississippi 

 Kiver, and never occurring as a regular inhabitant of the denser woodlands. 

 The opinion most prevalent in respect to its primitive range, as expressed by 

 authors who have given most attention to the subject, is, that it for a long 

 time inhabited the wdiole of that part of North America east of the Eocky 



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Mountains between the parallels of 30° and 60°; some, however, make the 



Alleghanies the eastern limit of its eastward extension. 



To the westward 



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some have considered its habitat as embracing a considerable part of that 

 portion of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains contained wdthin the 

 United States. The purpose of the present article is not only to determine, as 

 definitely as can now be done, its former extreme hmit of distribution, but to 

 give also a detailed history of its extermination over the area from which it 

 has disappeared. Although hundreds of volumes and distinct papers relat- 

 ing to the early exploration and settlement of the country embraced wdthin 

 the former range of this animal have been consulted in the preparation of 

 this paper, there probably still exist many important facts, incidentally re- 



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corded, in little-known documents and in works in which such facts would 

 hardly be expected to occur, which have been overlooked, and which will 

 tdtimately serve to indicate still more definitely the date of its extinction at 

 particular localities, though little probably that wdll materially affect the gen-! 

 eral results herewith presented. 



of its Former HaUtat 



e boundaries of the former habi- 



tat of the buffalo appear to have been about as follows : Beginning with the 

 region east of the Mississippi River, its extension to the northward was limited 

 by the Great Lakes, while the Alleghanies may be taken as its general eastern 

 limit, its occurrence in the mountainous and more elevated parts of the Caro- 



linas beino: due rather to the occasional wandering of small bands through 



the mountains from the immense herds that formerly inhabited the valleys of 



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