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THE AMERICAlSr BISONS. 



167 



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tliere are several well known salt-licksj where bison are sure to be found at 

 all seasons of the year. They do not frequent any of the districts formed of 

 primitive rocks, and the limits of their range to the eastward within the 



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Hudson Bay Company's territories may be correctly marked on the map by 

 a line commencing in longitude 97"^ on the Red Kiver which flows into the 

 south-end. of Lake Winipeg, crossing the Saskatchewan to the westward of 

 the Basquian hill, and running thence by the Athapescow to the east end 



of Great Slave Lake. Their migrations to the westward were formerly lim- 

 ited by the Rocky Mountain range, and they are still unknown in New Cale- 

 donia and on the shores of the Pacific to the north of the Cokimbia River; 

 but of late years they have found out a passage across the mountains near 



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the sources of the Saskatchewan, and their numbers to the westward are 

 said to be annually increasing." * The range of the buffalo in British 

 America was hence co-extensive with the prairies, meeting the range of the 

 musk-ox on the north, and the prairies and plains of the United States on 

 the south. It was not, however, exclusively confined to the plains, and 

 apparently less so at the northward than toward the south. Besides posi- 

 tively forsaking the more exposed portions of the northern plains and seek- 

 ing refuge in the woods during the severer periods of cold in winter, they are 



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said to frequent, at all seasons, the timber adjoining the prairie districts. In 

 a later work Dr. Richardson refers to the range of this animal as follows : 

 " The bison, though inhabiting the prairies in vast bands, frequents also the 



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wooded country, and once, I believe, almost all parts of it down to the coasts 

 of the Atlantic ; but it had not until lately crossed the Rocky Mountain 



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range, nor is it now known on the Pacific Slope, except in a very few places. 



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Its most northern limit is the Horn Mountain [in latitude 62°] ."f To the 

 northward of the Saskatchewan, the prairie country is confined to limited 

 areas, and there buffaloes range extensively through the open woods.t The 



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habitat of the bison north of the United States, at the beginning of the 



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present century, hence embraced a ti-iangular area, extending. through about 



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seventeen degrees of longitude (from 96'' to 113°) on the northern boun- 

 dary of the United States, decreasing in breadth northward to a narrow point 



* Fauna Boreali-Amcricana, Vol. I, pp. 279, 280. 



■f Arctic Searching Expedition: A Journal of a Boat- Voyage tlirougli Rupert's Land and the Arctic 

 Sea, American ed., p. 99, 1852. 



I Hind believes tliat the so-called "prairie" buffalo, as distinguished by the hunters from the "wood" 

 builalo, formerly "ranged through open woods, almost as much as he now does through the prairies." — 



Assinniboine and Saskatchewan Expedition^ Vol. 11, p. 106. , 



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