382 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887 



able. It is probable that it was burned in the fire that destroyed a 

 portion of the Institution in 1865. Fortunately Professor Allen ob- 

 tained and published in his monograph (in French) a copy of that por- 

 tion of Dr. Berlandier's work relating to the presence of the bison in 

 Mexico,* of which the following is a translation : 



" In Mexico, when the Spaniards, ever greedy for riches, pushed their 

 explorations to the north and northeast, it was not long before they 

 met with the buffalo. In 1602 the Franciscan monks who discovered 

 Nuevo Leon encountered in the neighborhood of Monterey numerous 

 herds of these quadrupeds. They were also distributed in Nouvelle 

 Biscaye (States of Chihuahua and Durango), and they sometimes ad- 

 vanced to the extreme south of that country. In the eighteenth cen- 

 tury they concentrated more and more toward the north, but still re- 

 mained very abundant in the neighborhood of the province of Bexar. 

 At the commencement of the nineteenth century we see them recede 

 gradually in the interior of the country to such an extent that they be- 

 came day by day scarcer and scarcer about the settlements. Now, it is 

 not in their periodical migrations that we meet them near Bexar. 

 Every year in the spring, in April or May, they advance toward the 

 north, to return again to the southern regions in September and Octo- 

 ber. The exact limits of these annual migrations are unknown ; it is, 

 however, probable that in the north they never go beyond the banks of 

 the Bio Bravo, at least in the States of Cohahuila and Texas. Toward 

 the north, not being checked by the currents of the Missouri, they pro- 

 gress even as far as Michigan, and they are found in summer in the 

 Territories and interior States of the United States of North America. 

 The route which these animals follow in their migrations occupies a 

 width of several miles, and becomes so marked that, besides the verdure 

 destroyed, one would believe that the fields had been covered with 

 manure. 



"These migrations are not general, for certain bands do not seem to 

 follow the general mass of their kin, but remain stationary throughout 

 the whole year on the prairies covered with a rich vegetation on the 

 banks of the Bio de Guadelupe and the Bio Colorado of Texas, not 

 far from the shores of the Gulf, to the east of the colony of San Felipe, 

 precisely at the same spot where La Salle and his traveling companions 

 saw them two hundred years before. The Bev. Father Damian Man- 

 sanet saw them also as in our days on the shores of Texas, in regions 

 which have since been covered with the habitations, hamlets, and 

 villages of the new colonists, and from whence they have disappeared 

 since 1828. 



" From the observations made on this subject we may conclude that 

 the buffalo inhabited the temperate zone of the New World, and that 

 they inhabited it at all times. In the north they never advanced be- 

 yond the 48th or 58th degree of latitude, and in the south, although 



* The American Bisonn. pp. 129-130 



