THE AMERICAN BISONS. 73 



West Virginia and the adjacent parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, than to this 

 region having been regularly embraced within its habitat. To the southward 

 it seems never to have been met with south of the Tennessee River. It is well 

 known to have ranged over Northern and Western Arkansas, and thence south- 

 ward over the greater part of Texas, and across the Rio Grande into Mexico. 

 Westward it extended over Northern New Mexico and thence westward and 

 northward throughout the Great Salt Lake Basin, and probably to the Sierra 

 Nevada Mountains in California and the Blue Mountains in Oregon. North 

 of the United States, its western boundary seems to have been formed by 

 the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, among the foot-hills of which it 

 has been found as far north as the sources of the Mackenzie River. Its 

 most northern limit appears to have been the northern shore of the Great 

 Slave Lake in about latitude 62 3 to 64°. In the British Possessions its range 

 to the eastward did not extend beyond the plains west of the Hudson's Bay 

 highlands. Thence southward it occupied the valleys of the Saskatchewan 

 and its tributaries to Lake Winnipeg and the valley of the Red River of the 

 North. It ranged thence southward over the head-waters of the Mississippi, 

 extending eastward nearly to the western shore of Lake Michigan, and thence 

 still eastward over the prairies of Northern Indiana, and along the southern 

 shore of Lake Erie into Western Pennsylvania, where, as already stated, the 

 Alleghanies formed its eastern limit. It was hence wholly absent from the 

 region immediately north of the Great Lakes, and consecpiently from every 

 portion of the present Canadas ; its existence on the Atlantic slope of the 

 continent being also confined to the highlands of North and South Carolina. 

 With this preliminary statement respecting the extent of its former habitat, 

 we will pass now to the details of the subject, presenting not only the evi- 

 dence on which this general statement rests, but also investigating the nu- 

 merous supposed references to its occurrence outside of these boundaries. 



The evidence bearing upon the general subject is of course resolvable into 

 two kinds : first, that of a positive character, or direct statements touching 

 the points at issue ; secondly, inferential evidence, mainly of a negative 

 character. The first explorers of the different parts of the continent, being 

 largely dependent for sustenance upon the chase, have naturally recorded in 

 the narratives of their explorations the wild animals they met with. In the 

 case of an animal so important as the buffalo, it is presumable that they 

 would usually state where it was first encountered, and that they would refer 

 frequently to its presence or absence, as the case might be, at subsequent 



