64 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XIII, 



western end of Lake Athabasca, and westward to the east base of 

 the Rocky Mountains. On my map, 1 intended to show the ap- 

 proximate range of the Bison in 1875, its northern limit is given 

 as not extending much beyond Peace River, while in 1889 Mr. 

 Hornaday gave its supposed area as a very limited district, wholly 

 to the south of Peace River. 2 It is quite probable that both maps 

 were in this respect erroneous. Mr. Hornaday's plotting of this 

 portion of his map was doubtless based on Prof. John Macoun's 

 statement in his ' Manitoba and the Great North- West,' pub- 

 lished in 1883, in which he says (p. 342) : " In the winter of 1870 

 the last buffalo were killed north of Peace River ; but in 1875 

 about one thousand were still in existence between the Athabasca 

 and Peace Rivers, north of Little Slave River." 



According to Warburton Pike, 8 in 1890 "a few bands of buf- 

 falo " were scattered over a considerable area of country between 

 the Liard River and Great Slave Lake, and thence south to Peace 

 River. " Sometimes," he says, " they are heard of at Forts Smith 

 and Vermillion, sometimes at Fort St. John close up to the big 

 mountains on Peace River, and occasionally at Fort Nelson on* 

 the south branch of the Liard. It is impossible to say anything 

 about their nurnbers, as the country they inhabit is so large, and 

 the Indians, who are few in number, usually keep to the same 

 hunting-ground." The site of his own successful hunt for these 

 animals, in February, 1890, was on a tributary of Buffalo River, 

 about fifty miles south of its entrance into Great Slave Lake. 



It was near this point that Frank Russell hunted them in 1894, 

 with the same Indian guide, but without success. He says : "At 

 the end of the fourth day [from Fort Resolution] we reached the 

 northern limit of the buffalo range, perhaps fifty miles south of 

 the Great Slave Lake." Owing to stormy weather, Mr. Russell 

 failed to reach the herd, being compelled to turn back without 

 seeing a single bison. Concerning their numbers, haunts, and 

 prospects he writes as follows * : 



" The herd at present consists of a few hundred only. They 

 are so wary that but one effective shot can be fired when they be- 



1 The American Bison, Living and Extinct. Mem. Geol. Surv. Kentucky, Vol. I, Part 

 ii, 1876, and Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., Vol. IV, No. 10, 1876. 



2 The Extermination of the American Bison. Report of the U. S. Nat. Mus., 1886-87 

 (1889), pp. 360-548, pH. i-xxii. 



3 Barren Ground of Northern Canada, 1893, p. 143. 



4 Explorations in the Far North, 1898, pp. 231, 232. 



