310 THE WILDERNESS AND JUNGLE 



and hides ; but in any case, even had it been 

 spared another decade, it would have had to 

 disappear in order that the prairies might be 

 prepared for the greatest wheat crops the world 

 has ever seen. Sentiment is a pleasant luxury, 

 but it may be a costly one, and it must give 

 way to the growing needs of a great nation. 

 It is impossible to think of these thundering 

 herds of dangerous wild oxen still in possession 

 of the prairies. They might just as well have 

 been left to the Red Indians. From a less 

 sternly practical standpoint, no doubt, there is 

 something horrible in the fate that so swiftly 

 overtook the "buffalo." Within the memory 

 of living men there were still two or three 

 millions of these splendid creatures left in the 

 wild state, for it is on record that, as late as 

 the winter of 1878-9, two hundred thousand 

 buffalo hides were shipped to Europe, and a 

 year or two earlier more than four thousand of 

 these animals were slain in the Yellowstone 

 Park, which has now for many years been a 

 sanctuary for all wild life. As a result of this 

 hurried slaughter of an animal that, for all its 

 size and strength, was easily ridden down and 

 shot wholesale, not more than two or three 

 thousand American buffaloes are left alive on 

 earth and even these are no more than half 

 wild, since they live, under more or less con- 

 tinual observation, in the State parks of Canada 



