PART II. 



1. — Geographical Distribution, past and present, of 

 Bison americanus. 



Tiie fate of none of our larger mammals is more interesting than is that 

 of. the bison, since total extermination is eventually surer to none than to 

 this former " monarch of the prairies." Since Europeans first came to this 

 continent all the larger ruminants and carnivores have become greatly re- 

 duced in number throughout its vast extent, and many species have already 

 become extinct over extensive areas where they were formerly the most 

 characteristic animals. The moose and the caribou have a far less extended 

 range, particularly to the southward, now than formerly ; the common 

 deer, once abundant throughout Eastern North America, is now confined 

 to the least settled parts of the country, having totally disappeared over 

 three fourths of the region it formerly occupied ; the elk, formerly existing 

 over nearly the whole continent, now scarcely survives east of the Mississippi 

 Eiver, though less than half a century ago it ranged in large bands over the 

 fertile prairies of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, and was of occa- 

 sional occurrence in the mountainous parts of even the Atlantic States ; the 

 bear, the wolf, and the panther, formerly so numerous as to be, if not dan- 

 gerous, at least a source of great annoyance to the early settlers, are now 

 found, east of the Great Plains, only in the least settled and more broken 

 wooded portions of the country. The bison, at once the largest and the 

 most important animal to the aboriginal tribes of this continent, as it was also 

 the most numerous over the immense region it frequented, still occurs in 

 almost numberless bands, but it has become so circumscribed in its habitat, 

 and is so constantly persecuted by professional hunters, that its total exter- 

 mination seems to be fast approaching. 



The precise limits of the range of the buffalo at the time when the first 



