312 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



those trim lawns grazed by tame deer and en- 

 closed in paling's which represent our notion 

 of parks at home. The park at Banff covers 

 three and a half million acres and is therefore 

 equal in extent to nearly all three ridings of 

 Yorkshire together. Within it are busy mining 

 cities, deep lakes, mighty rivers, mountains ten 

 thousand feet high, impenetrable bush, and 

 hundreds of miles of horse trails. In such a 

 wilderness the buffalo, moose, and elk can lead 

 an existence as peaceful as they did before 

 man came on the scene to break up their 

 homes. There is another small herd in the 

 Yellowstone Park, though poachers have suc- 

 ceeded in taking toll of it, so that few remain ; 

 but a third herd, which roams at large in some 

 wild country near the Great Slave Lake, and 

 a small band in the Wichita Forest are still 

 doing well. The European bison is protected 

 in much the same way by the Prince of Pless, 

 in Silesia. This species was threatened with 

 extinction, having been reduced from nearly 

 two thousand survivors in 1857 to less than 

 five hundred in 1892. The total has again 

 reached nearly fifteen hundred, half of these 

 being protected by H.M. the Tsar in his 

 forests of Bielowitza and Swisslotsch. This 

 magnificent bison is not, as sometimes stated, 

 the same animal as the ancient aurochs, which 

 man hunted in the Stone Age. That type, 



