American Big Game in its Haunts 



and shoulders. The yak of central Asia is very 

 bison-like in some respects, but in others departs in 

 the direction of oxen. 



So at last, group by group, we have gone 

 through the ungulates, and the bisons alone are 

 left, and as the American animal has short, in- 

 curved horns, set low down on the skull and far 

 apart at the base; premaxillaries falling short of 

 the nasals ; the last cervical and the anterior dorsal 

 vertebrae with spines ; fourteen pairs of ribs, and a 

 mane covering the shoulders, we conclude that it is 

 a bison, and as the same characteristics with minor 

 variations are shown by the European species, 

 often, but wrongly, called "aurochs," we say that 

 these two alone of existing Bovida are bisons, 

 with the yak as a somewhat questionable relative. 



In all essential respects the two bisons are very 

 similar, but minute comparison shows that the 

 European species, Bison bonasus, has a wider and 

 flatter forehead, bearing longer and more slender 

 horns, and all the other distinctive features are less 

 pronounced. In the American species, Bison bison, 

 the pelvis is less elevated, producing the character- 

 istic slope of the hindquarters. It is a coincidence 

 that the two regions originally inhabited by the 

 bisons are those in which the white races of men 

 have to the greatest extent thrown their restless 



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