346 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



different look from their shorter- and stouter-horned relatives, 

 which is obvious even in photographs of the living animals. 



The range of this race is (or was) north of the United States, 

 in northwestern Canada, east of the Rocky Mountains to 

 about the 95th meridian, and between latitudes 55 and 63 

 N., approximately. According to Dr. R. M. Anderson (1937) 

 there "is evidence that the wood bison formerly was found 

 some little distance northwest of Great Slave Lake as far as 

 Horn Mountains and Liard River, and for an indeterminate 

 distance up the Peace River valley, and southward, but it is 

 now restricted to the Wood Buffalo Park area, on both sides of 

 the 60th parallel." Preble (1908) has assembled a large 

 amount of data gleaned from the accounts of older travelers 

 and explorers concerning the bison of this northern region. 

 It appears that the animals "formerly ranged over immense 

 areas north to Great Slave Lake and Liard River," where in 

 1772, Samuel Hearne found them "very plentiful." At the 

 beginning of the last century Mackenzie recorded "numerous 

 herds" on the plains near Vermilion Falls and in the Peace 

 River region, which was probably close to its southern limit. 

 There is some evidence that by 1828 it was already diminishing 

 in numbers here, and according to Cowan (1939) the last 

 record of its presence in the district is furnished by Dawson, 

 who, in his report of his expedition down the Peace River in 

 1879 and 1880, mentions the many scattered bones and the 

 saucershaped wallows of the buffalo, adding that "the Beaver 

 Indians report having seen in the summer of 1879, six woodland 

 buffaloes of which they killed one in the vicinity of Pouce 

 Coupe." Probably they did not long persist in this part of 

 British Columbia after that time. Their destruction in this 

 region may not have been wholly due to man, for in 1877 

 J. A. Allen published a letter giving observations of two young 

 men who had reached the Yukon through British America in 

 which they state that in making a portage from Peace River to 

 Hay River, they saw "thousands of buffalo skulls and old 

 trails in some instances two or three feet deep, leading east and 

 west. They wintered on Hay River, near its entrance into 

 Great Slave Lake, and there found the buffalo still common, 

 occupying a restricted territory along the southern border of 

 the lake. This was in 1871. They made inquiry concerning 

 the large number of skulls seen by them on the portage, and 



