Ixvi. president's address. 



that of the American bison, which formerly ranged over about one- 

 third of the North American Continent from the Atlantic shore of 

 North America, across the Alleghanies to the prairies above the 

 Mississippi and southward to its delta. It also wandered across 

 Texas to North-Eastern INIexico, across the Rocky Mountains to 

 Utah and northward to the Great Slave Lake. In consequence of 

 the settlement of the country by Europeans the area was gradually 

 contracted, and about 1840 it occupied the centre only of its former 

 range. The Union Pacific Railway divided this great central herd 

 into a southern and northern division, the former consisting of 

 about four millions, the latter of about one and a-half millions. 

 Between 1869 and 1880, that is to say in eleven years, the southern 

 herd practically ceased to exist. In a short time 20 stragglers in 

 Texas represented the last of them, a similar fate overtook the 

 northern portion. In 1883 a herd of some 200, derived from the 

 northern herd, was preserved by the United States Government in 

 the Yellowstone National Park. In 1886 the taxidermist of the 

 Smithsonian Museum of Washington was directed to secure a 

 complete series of fresh skins and skeletons of the Bison, and 

 finding there were none, excepting those in Yellowstone Park, he 

 took out an expedition to Texas, where the party found a herd of 

 50 or 60, which had found shelter there since the destruction of 

 the great northern herd in 1881-83 and in fancied security, but 

 the settlement of the country by ranchmen doomed every one of 

 them to destruction. Three were taken in the expedition and 22 

 afterwards. Their skins and skeletons are described as being now 

 of almost " priceless value." The European Bison, which was once 

 common throughout Central Europe, the Caucasus, and Carpathian 

 Mountains, is now found only in the forests of Lithuania, where 

 it is saved from immediate extinction by the protection of the 

 Russian Emperor. Some jears ago the Lithuanian Bisons num- 

 bered 1,000, in 1870 they had diminished to 528, and all attempts 

 to domesticate them have failed. It is a sad certainty that in a 

 very few years the Elk, or Wapiti, Mountain Sheep, Goat, Deer, 

 Moose, and other forms will have totally disappeared. 



