The Lordly Buffalo 265 



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 ranchmen. For many long years after the 

 buffalo die out 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 con- 

 ditions of life to which it has slowly fitted itself by 

 a process of natural selection continued for count- 

 less generations, may succumb at once when these 

 surrounding conditions are varied by the introduc- 

 tion of one or more new elements, immediately be- 

 coming the chief forces with which it has to contend 

 in the struggle for life. The most striking charac- 

 teristics of the buffalo, and those which had been 

 found most useful in maintaining the species until 

 the white man entered upon the scene, were its 

 phenomenal gregariousness surpassed by no other 

 four-footed beast, and only equaled, if equaled 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 moun- 

 tain animal was at that time also greatly in its favor. 

 Its toughness and hardy endurance fitted it to con- 

 tend 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 



L VOL. IV. 



