224 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 



only native wild animal of the cattle kind known to America. 

 This noble animal literally abounded on the western plains and 

 has practically become extinct within the memory of men still 

 young ; indeed the Union Pacific Railroad and its first contract 

 with Buffalo Bill 1 practically sealed the death warrant of the 

 finest wild animal on the western continent. 



This animal would surely have been domesticated and made 

 into a useful servant, had we not already possessed our common 

 cattle, making it unnecessary to begin over again ; just as we 

 should have domesticated the prairie chicken except for the 

 hen, and just as our forefathers did domesticate the wild tur- 

 key 2 of the New England woods. 



The common cattle both of this country and Europe had an 

 undoubted origin in one or more of the primitive races of the 

 cattle kind that inhabited that country in the earliest times, 

 descendants of which are now extinct, except as they have been 

 preserved by accidental inclosure in the hunting parks of certain 

 estates in England. In prehistoric ages the whole of Europe 

 except Ireland was ranged over by an immense wild animal of 

 the cattle kind, known to science as B. primigenns, or first ox. 



Remains of this animal are found in brick clays and peat 

 bogs in many places, from the skulls of which it is inferred that 

 the spread of horns must have been at least four feet. Some of 

 these skulls are pierced by flint arrowheads, showing that they 

 were hunted probably for food as far back as the paleolithic or 

 oldest stone age. 



This animal or its immediate descendants persisted in the 

 forests of Central Europe until comparatively recent times. It 



1 Colonel William F. Cody, a noted hunter and Indian scout, took the con- 

 tract to supply the workmen with buffalo meat during the construction of this 

 road. Thus the bison literally gave his life for the first transcontinental rail- 

 road. The great numbers killed under this contract (69 in one day and 4862 

 in one year) earned for Mr. Cody the name of Buffalo Bill, a name he will 

 carry through life, and under which he organized and conducted his famous 

 Wild West Show, exhibiting, as this is written, but a few miles away. 



2 See section on the turkey. 



