SEPTEMBER 201 



singularly gentle and inoffensive. Such, at least, is the 

 character they have earned at Woburn Abbey, where 

 the Duke of Bedford has a small herd. 



Yet of all animals on earth, none has juster cause 

 for cherishing vengeance against tyrant man than the 

 American bison. Of all the countless multitude which 

 roamed the prairies within living memory not a single 

 bull or cow remains. Tens of thousands of these noble 

 beasts were hunted down and slaughtered, sometimes 

 only for their tongues, all the prime beef and splendid 

 hides being left to feed the coyotes and buzzards, or to 

 rot. Not until it was too late did men realise the value 

 of what they had allowed to be wasted. The price of 

 a buffalo-robe, once the perquisite of every cowboy 

 the common wrap of every Red Indian is now 

 reckoned in hundreds of dollars. As a wild race, the 

 American bison exists no more. About six hundred 

 head are preserved in private parks, and a bull com- 

 mands the price of 5000 dollars (1000). Swift and 

 complete has been the destruction ; far swifter and even 

 more complete than that which has overtaken the 

 incalculable number and variety of beautiful creatures, 

 indigenous to the South African veldt, although that 

 continent also has lost several species for ever. 



The possibility of restoring the bison to the American 

 prairies has been vigorously taken up by Major Gordon 

 W. Lillie, who is distinguished by the sobriquet of 

 ' Pawnee Bill.' For several years he has devoted him- 

 self to encounter the difficulty which always has to be 

 faced in attempting to rescue from utter extinction a 

 race once exceedingly numerous and prolific, when it 



