120 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



period, since their skulls occur wholly buried in the marshes about the 

 lake, where the deposition appears to have been quite slow. I am also 

 informed by Mr. II. W. Henshaw, the well-known ornithologist of Lieuten- 

 ant Wheeler's Survey, that their skulls have been found in Utah Lake. 

 Mr. Henshaw, under date of Washington, D. C, March G, 1875, writes as 

 follows : — 



'■ The only information I have regarding its [the buffalo's] presence in Utah 

 was derived from Mr. Madsen, a Danish fisherman, living on the borders of 

 Utah Lake ; and, I may add, I am perfectly convinced of the trustworthi- 

 ness of his statement. In using the seine in the waters of the lake, he has 

 on several occasions brought up from the bottom the skulls of buffaloes, in a 

 very good state of preservation. Their presence in the lake may perhaps 

 be accounted for on the supposition that, in crossing on the ice, a herd may 

 at some time have broken through, and thus perished. From him I also 

 learned that he hail talked with Indians of middle age whose fathers had 

 told them that in their time the buffaloes were numerous, and that they had 

 hunted them near the lake. If this can be accepted as truth, it would place 

 the existence of these animals in Utah back to a not very distant date. I 

 learn from my friend, W. W. Howell, that during the past season he obtained 

 the cranium of a buffalo, which was unearthed by some laborers while dig- 

 ging a mill-race, at a depth of ten feel below the surface. This was in a 

 broad canon near Gunnison. While, from the fact of its being in a earion.no 

 very exact estimate can lie made of the time of its deposit* there seemed 

 every evidence that the soil above it had remained undisturbed for a long 

 time. The lower portion of the cranium is gone, leaving the pail above the 

 orbits, and the horn-cores, intact and in an excellent state of preservation. 

 A comparison of this with a recent specimen of the />. americanus shows that 



in certain characters it exhibits an a pproach to the Bt80tl latifrOWS, as described 



by Leidy. In size it varies little from the B. americanus, but in all other 

 characteristics is much nearer the B. latifrons."* 



The buflalo seems, however, to have lingered later on the head-waters of 

 the ' lolorado than in either the Greal Sail bake Valley, or the vallej of Bear 

 River, or on the head-waters of the two main links of the Columbia Fre- 

 mont found them on St. V rain's Fork of Green River, and on the Vermilion 

 in 1844,1 and Stansbury, in L849, found them on the northern tributaries of 



• It- agrcemanl in ilxe «iili Boon americamu i> mfficienl i" indicate it< identity with thai ip 

 f 1'" I titiona, etc . p. 281. 



