162 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 



they ever reached any part of Georgia, Florida, or Alabama 

 (although possibly Mississippi), as at present bounded, not 

 appearing habitually to have penetrated south of the Ten- 

 nessee River unless just along the bank of the Father of 

 Waters on account of the thickness of the forest. 



The records in general, then, show that at the beginning 

 of the seventeenth century the range of the buffalo east of 

 the Mississippi, with the exception of its occasional appear- 

 ance on the eastern slope of the Alleghanies in the Caro- 

 linas and Virginia, was restricted to the area drained by 

 the Ohio River (except over the lowlands at its mouth), 

 and to the eastern tributaries of the Mississippi in northern 

 Wisconsin and Minnesota; also that it was very numerous, 

 and uniformly distributed over the prairies of Illinois and 

 Indiana, and also about the upper tributaries of the Ohio ; 

 but less numerously and uniformly over Ohio, West Vir- 

 ginia, Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, and the northern 

 portion of Tennessee, being everywhere restricted to the 

 prairies and scantily wooded land along the streams. 



In the appendix to Mr. Allen's admirable monograph, 

 Professor N. S. Shaler offers a short discussion of the prob- 

 able age of the bison in the Ohio Valley. In the swamps 

 surrounding the "salt-licks" of Kentucky, buffalo -bones 

 are found packed in great quantities in the mucky soil, but 



