NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 219 



a ranch and kill one or more head of cattle almost every day, 

 the ranchmen become so seriously alarmed that they frequently 

 offer a reward of $50 or $100 apiece for scalps. " Bounties have 

 been tried, and in some cases several smaller ranches combine 

 to offer a large reward in addition to that paid by the county, 

 but the danger is that the hunters are tempted "to save the 

 breeding females and dig out the young each year for the 

 bounty, thus making their business not only profitable but 

 permanent. " A better method seems to be to employ profes- 

 sional hunters who are well paid by the month to keep down 

 wolves or other noxious animals. 



PLAINS WOLF; BUFFALO WOLF 



CANIS LUPUS NUBILUS Say 



Canis nubilus Say, Long's Exped. Rocky Mountains, vol. 1, p. 160, 1823 (Engineer 



Cantonment, near present town of Blair, Nebraska). 

 SYNONYM: Canis variabilis Wied, Reise in das Innere Nord-Amer., vol. 2, p. 95, 1841 



(Fort Clark, near Stanton, Mercer County, North Dakota). 



This was the wolf found on the Great Plains of the United 

 States from the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas west to the 

 Rocky Mountains and eastward possibly to the western parts 

 of Iowa and Missouri. Though not so pale as the races to the 

 north, it was less dark than C. I. lycaon to the east. The skull 

 was similar in size to that of the adjacent races monstrabilis 

 and youngi, but the frontal region was more flattened than in 

 the former, with wider rostrum. 



In the middle of the last century and earlier these wolves 

 were common on the Central Plains, following the herds of 

 bison and picking off young or disabled individuals, but at the 

 present time they are extinct over the greater part of the area 

 once occupied. With the pushing of the railroads out across the 

 country, the coming of settlers, and the development of stock 

 grazing, the buffalo were reduced or exterminated and the 

 wolves for a time devoted their attention to cattle, with the 

 result that the ranchers and hunters pursued them relentlessly 

 until now only a few remain in the remoter regions, where the 

 roughness or barrenness of the country makes agriculture im- 

 practicable. 



Vernon Bailey (1926) has gathered together many interesting 

 notes on their former presence in the Dakotas, where in the 



