ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 61 



eal album, reminding one of the botanical album of Ruiz and Pavon's 

 Flora Peruviana, in which the names of new genera of plants were 

 adapted to the Court Calendar, and to the various changes taking 

 place in the Oficiales de la Secretaria. 



To the east of the Mississippi dense forests still partially prevail; 

 but to the west of the river there are only Prairies-, in which the 

 buffalo (Bos americanus), and the musk ox (Bos moschatus), feed in 

 large herds. Both these animals (the largest of the New World) 

 serve the wandering Indians, the Apaches Llaneros and the Apaches 

 Lipanos, for food. The Assiniboins sometimes kill in a few days 

 from seven to eight hundred bisons in what are called " bison parks," 

 artificial enclosures into which the wild herds are driven. (Maxi- 

 milian, Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America, bd. i. 

 1839, s. 443.) The American bison, or buffalo, called by the 

 Mexicans cibolo, which is frequently killed merely for the sake of 

 the tongue, a much-prized . dainty, is by no means a mere variety of 

 the Aurochs of the Old Continent; although some other kinds of 

 animals, as the elk (Cervus alces) and the reindeer (Cervus taran- 

 dus), and even, in the human race, the short-statured polar-man, are 

 common to the northern parts of both continents, evidencing their 

 former long-continued connection. The Mexicans call the European 

 ox in the Aztec dialect "quaquahue," a horned animal, from qua- 

 quahuitl, a horn. Some very large horns of cattle' found in the 

 ancient Mexican buildings, not far from Cuernavaca, to the south- 

 west of the city of Mexico, appear to me to have belonged to the J 

 musk ox. The Canadian bison can be tamed to agricultural labor?|| 

 It breeds with the European cattle, but it was long uncertain whether ; 

 the hybrid was fruitful. Albert Gallatin, who, before he appeared 

 in Europe as a distinguished diplomatist, had obtained by personal * 

 inspection great knowledge of the uncultivated parts of the United f 

 States, assures us that " the mixed breed was quite common fifty 

 years ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia; andj 

 the cows, the issue of that mixture, propagated like all others." "If 

 do not remember," he adds, "the grown bison being tamed, but? 

 sometimes young bison calves were caught by dogs, and were broughtl 

 up and driven out with the European cows." At Monongahela all 1 

 the cattle were for a long time of this mixed breed : but complaitlte 

 6 



