324 The Botanical Gazette. [October, 
Now such a pad of hair (overlooking the breast and legs of 
the animal) matted as we have said, and daily rubbed in earth 
banks or wallows, is as good an apparatus for artificial dissem- 
ination ascould be imagined when we consider the range and 
habits of the animal. Given a herd of ten thousand buffaloes 
roving from the Red River of Texas to northern Nebraska and 
Montana, we can justly imagine that the seeds of southern 
species of plant and shrub life would in time be left at inter- 
mediate points most favorable to their growth, while the re- 
turning herds in the fall and winter would be laden in the 
same manner with northern plant seeds to be in their turn 
seed brought from Red river is dropped in a favorable spot on 
the Arkansas insome trail or wallow. There it matures seeds 
mayhap for years; some of them are again entangled in the 
forehead or the front woolly hairs of a buffalo on its neck or 
fore legs and are finally dropped by chance on the Smoky 
Hill or Republican The same actions may recut, and the 
plant seeds be carried into the next valley or to the next 
prairie divide, so that in course of time it is not at all improb- 
able that any one species of plant would finally reach the ee 
termost northern limit of the buffalo’s northern range, Me 
plant being, as it were, slowly acclimated by the successivé 
transference from age to age in its continued dissemination. 
What we argue in relation to the Martynia, can equally appy 
to any plant or shrub seed, varying in its northward or $ ‘ 
ward progression just in proportion to its adaptability ee 
withstand heat or cold, drouth or moisture, and its adaptath 
eens his Arctic 
t 
Age ; t the 
expedition we find that h thered Opuntia glomerata a 
: soho P it since neat 
Lake Winnipeg. The occurrence of such a southern pists 
plant about latitude 50° to 51° north, we believe = eal 
due to a progressive dissemination by the buffalo, 2° ate 
by seed, but also by direct conveyance of hat of 
This transfer we conceive highly probable, 4+ Ameri 
many other plants and shrubs that range into British 
from as far south as latitude 35° and 36°. We are 
