The Lordly Buffalo. 245 



by side over the prairie for a mile's length. These old 

 trails are frequently used by the cattle herds at the present 

 time, or are even turned into pony paths by the ranch- 

 men. For many long years after the buffalo die put from 

 a place, their white skulls and well-worn roads remain as 

 melancholy monuments of their former existence. 



The rapid and complete extermination of the buffalo 

 affords an excellent instance of how a race, that has thriven 

 and multiplied for ages under conditions of life to which it 

 has slowly fitted itself by a process of natural selection 

 continued for countless generations, may succumb at once 

 when these surrounding conditions are varied by the intro- 

 duction of one or more new elements, immediately becoming 

 the chief forces with which it has to contend in the struggle 

 for life. The most striking characteristics of the buffalo, 

 and those which had been found most useful in maintain- 

 ing the species until the white man entered upon the 

 scene, were its phenomenal gregariousness surpassed by 

 no other four-footed beast, and only equalled, if equalled 

 at all, by one or two kinds of South African antelope, its 

 massive bulk, and unwieldy strength. The fact that it 

 was a plains and not a forest or mountain animal was at 

 that time also greatly in its favor. Its toughness and 

 hardy endurance fitted it to contend with purely natural 

 forces : to resist cold and the winter blasts, or the heat of 

 a thirsty summer, to wander away to new pastures when 

 the feed on the old was exhausted, to plunge over broken 

 ground, and to plough its way through snow-drifts or quag- 

 mires. But one beast of prey existed sufficiently powerful to 

 conquer it when full grown and in health ; and this, the 



