THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 143 



d'Amerique. Peter Kalm, who travelled through Amer- 

 ica in 1749, spoke of them as wilde oehsen and kuhe. But 

 the word buffalo at first spelled ~buffelo soon replaced the 

 earlier names. Scientific men claim that our species (Bison 

 americanus, Smith) should be called bison, as " buffalo " is 

 applicable only to the East Indian genus Bubalus. 



It appears that our bison has already outlived at least 

 two other races, which exceeded it in size the Bison lati- 

 frons and the Bison antiquus. The former was contem- 

 porary with the mastodon, and was an ox of gigantic bulk, 

 the tips of whose horns were eleven or twelve feet apart, 

 and which probably stood as high as an elephant. Of the 

 latter species more abundant remains have been dug up, 

 particularly from the ice-cliffs at Escholtz Bay, on the Arc- 

 tic coast north of Alaska. This fossil ox was of smaller 

 size than the Bison latifrons, but much larger than the ex- 

 isting buffalo, although not greatly different from it in 

 form. It seems to have been spread over the northwestern 

 half of the continent from the Ohio Valley to Alaska, its 

 remains occurring everywhere with those of the larger ex- 

 tinct mammalia, yet it may have survived to a compara- 

 tively recent date. 



With the appearance of the buffalo, which only a few 

 decades ago swarmed in prodigious herds over nearly a 



