;8o THE UNGULATES, OR HOOFED MAMMALS 



dropped in the most secluded parts of the forest. The cows apparently do not calve 

 more frequently than once in three years, so that the rate of increase is necessarily 

 slow. In defending their offspring against the attacks of bears and wolves, the 

 females display great courage, and seldom allow them to be carried off except at the 

 sacrifice of their own lives. Occasionally when full-grown bulls get half buried in 

 deep snow they are pulled down by wolves. 



THE AMERICAN BISON {Bos americanus) 



As the gaur in India has usurped the name of bison, while the European bison 

 has been frequently called the aurochs, so the American bison is almost invariably 

 named the buffalo. 



The American bison, which is now, unfortunately, practically exterminated, 

 differs from its European cousin not only in certain structural features, but likewise 

 in habits, being essentially an inhabitant of the open plains, where it formerly con- 

 gregated in vast herds, comprising thousands of individuals, and living entirely on 

 grass. According to Mr. Hornaday, to whom we are indebted for a full account of 

 the species, the American bison differs from the European kind in the following 

 features. Firstly, the mass of hair on the head, neck, and fore-quarters is much 

 longer and more luxuriant, and thus gives the animal the appearance of possessing 

 greater size than is really the case. As a matter of fact, the American species is 

 lower, and has a smaller pelvis and less powerful hind-quarters than its European 

 cousin, although its body is, on the whole, more massively built. Moreover, the 

 horns are shorter and more curved, while the front of the head is more convex, and 

 the sockets of the eye less tubular. The tail is shorter and less bushy. An unusually 

 fine bull American bison measured five feet eight inches at the withers, but the 

 average is considerably below this. 



Mr. Hornaday regards this species as the finest and most striking in appearance 

 of all the oxen, and remarks that "the magnificent dark-brown frontlet and beard, 

 the shaggy coat of hair upon the neck, hump, and shoulders, terminating at the knees 

 in a thick mass of luxuriant black locks, to say nothing of the dense coat of finer 

 fur on the body and hind-quarters, give to our species not only an apparent height 

 equal to that of the gaur, but a grandeur and nobility of presence which are beyond 

 all comparison among Ruminants. ' ' Good horns measure from sixteen to seventeen 

 inches, but a pair with a length of twenty and seven-eighths inches and a girth of 

 fifteen inches have been recorded. 



The range of the American bison originally extended over about 

 one-third of North America. ' ' Starting almost at tide water on the 

 Atlantic coast," writes Mr. Hornaday, "it extended westward through a vast tract 

 of dense forest, across the Alleghany mountain system to the prairies along the 

 Mississippi, and southward to the delta of that great system. Although the great 

 plain country of the West was the natural home of the species, where it flourished 

 most abundantly, it also wandered south across Texas to the burning plains of 

 northeastern Mexico, westward across the Rocky mountains into New Mexico 



