36 THE BISON. 



as latitude 63°, and are frequently met with in the 

 neighbourhood of the salt-licks. They retreat towards 

 the south on the approach of winter, and are nearly 

 always to be found about Nortliern Texas, Sonora, and 

 New Mexico. Immense herds of them are constantly 

 roaming over the prairies watered by the Arkansas, 

 Platte, Missouri, and the upper branches of the Sas- 

 katchewan. The settlers on the banks of the Eed 

 Eiver have a camp-hunt regularly ever}^ year, taking 

 their families off to the prairies for six weeks or two 

 months at a time. These excursions supply them 

 with sufficient meat to last them through the winter. 

 The hides are either sold or used for domestic pur- 

 poses. In Canada, a well-dressed buffalo-skin blanket 

 is worth from Si. to 41. 



Through all the above-named regions the bison 

 wanders in quest of food. Being rather a dainty 

 feeder he prefers the young, tender grass which 

 springs up after a prairie fire has cleared away the 

 old coarse herbage, and in winter-time he scrapes away 

 the snow with his feet to reach the greensward. 



The buffalo is certainly a most extraordinary- looking 

 beast, a strange mixture of the comic and the fero- 

 cious, the head and fore-quarters being very large, and 

 appearing more so from being covered with a thick 

 coating of shaggy hair, which grows over all the head 

 and neck, sometimes reaching a length of ten or twelve 

 inches. Beneath this is an undergrowth of soft crisp 



