tiison oj a Kina inai once preserved the prairies by 'mowing" its grass from Alberta to lex 

 from Illinois to Montana. Facing page: Portrait of a bull bison. 



their taloned feet, and clobber the little rodents as they bumble 

 about chewing grass stems. 



There are other parties to the construction and maintenance 

 of the prairies. Perhaps most notable among these are the 

 gallinaceous birds — the Prairie Chicken, and the Sharp-tailed 

 Grouse, that preposterous strutter. These game birds once lived 

 in great numbers, each in its own appointed and rather special- 

 ized place, on the endless plains of the Prairie Belt. They had 

 their own stamping grounds, and they, in turn, were the basis 

 of still another natural economy. Their multitudes maintained 

 the coyotes and the skunks. 



PRAIRIE OX AND PRONGHORN 'ANTELOPE" 



As we have said, the prairies were originally dependent upon 

 two animals — the little Prairie Dog and the mighty Bison. The 

 latter is a large ox, one of a group of similar beasts that once 

 roamed much of the northern hemisphere. There was, until 

 recently, a very large species in Alaska that had enormous 

 spreading horns: and there are still a handful of living individ- 



uals of a European species known as the Wisent, now all in 

 confinement. Bison once roamed from the spruce forests of the 

 Canadian Lakes District to central Mexico and from the Rockies 

 to the eastern seaboard. There is now evidence that they even 

 inhabited the prairies of the Pacific coastal lowlands. Of the 

 several species once extant, only two remain today, the Wood- 

 land Bison of the Great Slave Lake area which we have already 

 mentioned, and the Plains Bison or "buffalo." As everybody 

 knows, this animal was living by the millions all over the 

 central part of the continent when the white man first arrived, 

 but by the beginning of this century they were headed for, and 

 once were very near to, total extinction. However, a group of 

 public-spirited citizens banded together into a society for their 

 protection, and as a result the remnants were gathered together 

 and set out in suitable reservations, and their breeding was 

 carefully watched. They have now made a rather fine recovery, 

 but they will never regain their past glory simply because their 

 country — principally the Great Prairies — has gone forever. 



The Bison herds used once to drift all over the prairielands. 

 They often traveled in almost countless lines, single file, that 

 reached from horizon to horizon; and the trails their great hoofs 



156 



