OXEN. TOI 
trees are stripped of their foliage and bark as high up as the animals can reach, 
while smaller ones are broken down or uprooted. 
In spite of their size and bulk, bison are active animals, and can both trot and 
gallop with considerable speed. In galloping the head is carried close to the 
ground and the tail high in the air. Generally they are shy and retiring in 
disposition, more especially when young; but in the Lithuanian forest an old bull 
has been known to take possession of a road and challenge all comers. During the 
breeding-season, which takes place in August or the early part of September, the 
bison are in the best condition. At such seasons the bulls engage in terrific 
conflicts, which occasionally end fatally, for the leadership of the herd. These 
combats are at first entered upon somewhat playfully, but soon take place in 
earnest, when scenes like the one depicted in our coloured illustration may be 
witnessed. The old solitary bulls then return to the herds, and after having either 
driven away or killed their younger rivals, once more resume the leadership. Not 
only are the younger bulls sometimes killed in these conflicts, but the same fate 
occasionally overtakes the cows. At the conclusion of the breeding-season the old 
bulls revert to their solitary life. The calves are born in May or the early part of 
June, and are dropped in the most secluded parts of the forest. The cows apparently 
do not calve more frequently than once in three years, so that the rate of increase 
is necessarily slow. In defending their offspring against the attacks of bears and 
wolves, the females display great courage, and seldom allow them to be carried off 
except at the sacrifice of their own lives. Occasionally when full-grown bulls get 
half-buried in deep snow they are pulled down by wolves. 
THE AMERICAN BISON (Bos americanus). 
As the gaur in India has usurped the name of bison, while the European bison 
has been frequently called the aurochs, so the American bison in its native country 
is almost invariably misnamed the buffalo. 
The American bison, which is now, unfortunately, practically exterminated, 
differs from its European cousin not only in certain structural features, but likewise 
in habits, being essentially an inhabitant of the open plains, where it formerly 
congregated in vast herds, comprising thousands of individuals, and living entirely 
on grass. According to Mr. Hornaday, to whom we are indebted for a full account 
of the species, the American bison differs from the European kind in the following 
features. Firstly, the mass of hair on the head, neck, and fore-quarters is much 
longer and more luxuriant, and thus gives the animal the appearance of possessing 
greater size than is really the case. As a matter of fact, the American species is 
lower, and has a smaller pelvis and less powerful hind-quarters than its European 
cousin, although its body is, on the whole, more massively built. Moreover, the 
horns are shorter and more curved, while the front of the head is more convex, 
and the sockets of the eyes less tubular. The tail is shorter and less bushy. An 
unusually fine bull American bison measured 5 feet 8 inches at the withers, but 
the average is considerably below this. 
Mr. Hornaday regards this species as the finest and most striking in appearance 
of all the oxen, and remarks that “the magnificent dark-brown frontlet and beard, 
