338 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Since the first accounts of the American bison were those 

 brought back by the Spanish explorers of northeastern Mexico, 

 this is taken as the type locality of the so-called Plains bison, 

 the range of which is believed to have covered much of interior 

 North America from the tableland of Mexico and the grass- 

 lands of the West to the eastern Alleghenies, perhaps even 

 reaching the coast in the southeastern States. In a recent 

 history of the bison in Pennsylvania, Shoemaker has named the 

 animal ranging "between the east and west slopes of the 

 Alleghenies, migrating between the Great Lakes and the valleys 

 of Southern Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, to Georgia, " 

 as a distinct eastern race, pennsylvanicus, but unfortunately 

 the description is not based on a comparison of specimens, but 

 upon local tradition that the bison of this region was larger 

 than the Plains animal, and "very dark, many of the old bulls 

 being coal black, with grizzly white hairs around the nose and 

 eyes"; the hump "was notable by its absence" (which seems 

 strange), while the legs were "long" without the contrast 

 between the height of the fore and hind quarters seen in more 

 western animals. It is difficult to know what value to give 

 such an account, but the probability that these eastern bison 

 were somewhat different from those of the Mexican tableland 

 warrants the tentative recognition of the name. The charac- 

 ters claimed for the bison of Colorado and of Nebraska, named 

 B. b. hanningtoni and B. b. septentrionalis, respectively, seem 

 more likely to be merely individual variations in tooth struc- 

 ture, so that I have for the present considered these names as 

 synonyms of B. bison bison. 



An adult male Plains bison stands about 5% to 6 feet at the 

 highest point of the shoulder, but only about 4% feet at the 

 hip, so that the hind quarters are proportionately small and 

 the back is sloping. The females are somewhat smaller than 

 males. J. A. Allen (1876a) gives the following measurements: 

 Muzzle to insertion of tail, male, about 9 feet (2.75 m.) ; female, 

 about 6.5 feet (2 m.). The horns are short, thick at the base, 

 curving outward and upward, then somewhat inward. In the 

 female they are slenderer than in the male. "In winter the 

 head, neck, legs, tail, and whole under parts, are blackish- 

 brown; the upper surface of the body lighter. The color above 

 becomes gradually lighter towards spring; the new short hair 

 in autumn is soft dark umber or liver-brown. In very old 



