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THE AMEEICAK BISONS, 



173 



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multitudes fifty years ago have hardly been sustained of late, yet I am 

 inclined to the opinion that the extension of settlements in Dakota and Mon- 

 tana, the navigation of the Missouri by steamers, and the construction of the 

 Northern Pacific Railroad are concentrating the herds which had previously 

 retreated northward from the great overland route now traversed by the 

 Union Pacific Railroad, upon the tributaries of the Saskatchewan. Quite 

 recently, a party of hunters in the district adjoining the country of the 



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Blackfoot Indians, in longitude 110°, latitude 51°, was seven days in passing 

 through a herd. The Saskatchewan district sent 17,930 buffalo-robes through 

 Minnesota to market during the year ending September 30, 1872, while an 

 equal number was either consumed in the country or despatched to Europe 

 by vessels from York Factory, on Hudson's Bay." 



Respecting the present range of the buffalo in that portion of the British 

 Possessions immediately north of the United States line, I have been fa- 

 vored, through Principal J. W. Dawson of McGill College, Montreal, with 

 the following important communication from Professor George M. Dawson, 

 Geologist of the British and United States Boundary Survey, dated McGill 

 College, Montreal, June 3, 1875: "Understanding from Principal Dawson 

 that you wish to collect information as to the range of the buffalo in British 

 North America, I have marked on the enclosed portion of a map the range 

 of the animal on the forty-ninth parallel, of which alone I can speak from 



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"Buffalo chips," 



A reduced copy of tlie map above referred to by Professor Dawson. 



The obliq^ue dotted line to the right indicates approximately the eastern limit of "buffalo chips" in 1784 ; the arrows 

 near the centre, the paths of migration in June, 1874 ; the shaded area to the left, the range in September, 1874. 



personal knowledge. During the last sixteen years it would appear that the 

 buffaloes have been driven back over two hundred miles on the forty-ninth 

 parallel, and now do not extend in any force beyond White Mud Eiver, or 

 Frenchman's Creek (longitude 107° 30'). They reached this point when we 

 arrived there late in June of last summer, and were going north in great 





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