158 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 



" The fate of extermination so surely awaits, sooner or 

 later, the buffalo in its wild state, that its domestication be- 

 comes a matter of great interest, and is well worthy the at- 

 tention of intelligent stock-growers, some of whom should 

 be willing to take a little trouble to perpetuate the pure 

 race in a domestic state. The attempt can be hardly regard- 

 ed otherwise than as an enterprise that would eventually 

 yield a satisfactory and profitable result, with the possibili- 

 ty of adding another valuable domestic animal to those we 

 now possess." 



The precise limit of the range of the buffalo when the 

 first Europeans visited America is still a matter of uncer- 

 tainty, yet its boundaries at that time can be established 

 with tolerable exactness. It was beyond doubt almost ex- 

 clusively an animal of the prairies and the woodless plains, 

 ranging only to a limited extent into the forested districts 

 east of the Mississippi River. The results of the present 

 exhaustive inquiries seem to show that its extension to the 

 northward, east of the Mississippi, was limited by the Great 

 Lakes. Contrary to the supposition of several recent writ- 

 ers, Mr. Allen has not been able to find a single mention of 

 its occurrence within the present limits of Canada, New 

 England, or New York State, although the name of the 

 city of Buffalo and the neighboring " Buffalo Creek " prob- 



