THE AMERICAN BISON. 519 



herbage of the plains is their principal food. During the heat 

 of the day they bathe in the marshy swamps. Their sense 

 of smelling is so acute that they can detect the approach of 

 an enemy at a very considerable distance. They are not 

 dangerous, though irritable. When attacked they rarely trust 

 to their unwieldy strength for defence, but retreat with great 

 fleetness to the depths of the forest. Yet they frequently fall 

 a prey to the hunters, the wolves, and the grizly bears. When 

 assailed by wolves, the bisons defend themselves by forming 

 a circle with the strongest of the herd outside. 



Numbers of tame bisons are kept in the paddocks in the 

 western states of North America, where they breed readily 

 with the common domestic cow. Rafinisque says, that the 

 hybrid offspring is reproductive. It has the colour, the head, 

 and the shaggy front of the bison, but not the elevated withers, 

 though it has the sloping back. 



The flesh is said to be excellent, and is the chief food of the 

 native tribes ; but they kill more bisons than they consume, and 

 merely for the sake of the skins which they sell to the white 

 traders, from whom they receive a pint of whiskey for each 

 skin, which sells at New York for ten or twelve dollars. From 

 150,000 to 200,000 are annually purchased of them by the 

 traders. 



Some years ago a specimen of the American bison was exhi- 

 bited by a showman in London as the bonassus of Aristotle ! 

 This assertion, which was calculated to strip Columbus of some 

 of his laurels, was perhaps more ludicrous, though certainly 

 not more erroneous, than the false nomenclature which prevails 

 in the zoological books of ignorant compilers, and in the narratives 

 of some of the most modern travellers. 



