412 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



all this I may be mistaken, bnt it was also the opinion held by the old 

 buffalo hunter who accompanied me, and who at once remarked when 

 he saw them that they were ' mountain buffalo,' and not the plains 

 variety. * * * 



" These specimens were not actually measured by me in either case, 

 and tbeir being considered smaller only rested upon my judging them 

 by my eye. But they were of a softer pelage, black, lighter in limb, and 

 when discovered were in the timber, on the side of the Big Horn Mount- 

 ains." 



The band of bison in the Yellowstone Park must, of necessity, be of 

 the so-called kt wood" or " mountain" variety, and if by any chance one 

 of its members ever dies of old age, it is to be hoped its skin may be 

 carefully preserved and sent to the National Museum to throw some 

 further light on this question. 



11. The shedding of the winter pelage. — In personal appearance the 

 buffalo is subject to striking, aud even painful, variations, and the esti- 

 mate an observer forms of him is very apt to depend upon the time of 

 the year at which the observation is made. Toward the end of the winter 

 the whole coat has become faded and bleached by the action of the sun, 

 wind, snow, and rain, until the freshness of its late autumn colors has 

 totally disappeared. The bison takes on a seedy, weathered, and rusty 

 look. But this is not a circumstance to what happens to him a little 

 later. Promptly with the coming of the spring, if not even in the last 

 week of February, the buffalo begins the shedding of his winter coat. 

 It is a long and difficult task, and with commendable energy he sets 

 about it at the earliest possible moment. It lasts him more than half 

 the year, and is attended with many positive discomforts. 



The process of shedding is accomplished in two ways : by the new 

 hair growing into and forcing off the old, and by the old hair falling off 

 in great patches, leaving the skin bare. On the heavily-haired por- 

 tions — the head, neck, fore quarters, and hump— the old hair stops 

 growing, dies, and the new hair immediately starts through the skin 

 and forces it off. The new hair grows so rapidly, and at the same time 

 so densely, that it forces itself into the old, becomes hopelessly entan- 

 gled with it, and in time actually lifts the old hair clear of the skin. On 

 the head the new hair is dark brown or black, but on the neck, fore 

 quarters, and hump it has at first, and indeed until it is 2 inches in 

 length, a peculiar gray or drab color, mixed with brown, totally differ- 

 ent from its final and natural color. The new hair starts first on the 

 head, but the actual shedding of the old hair is to be seen first along the 

 lower parts of the neck and between the fore legs. The heavily-haired 

 parts are never bare, but, on the contrary, the amount of hair upon them 

 is about the same all the year round. The old and the new hair cling 

 together with provoking tenacity long after the old coat should fall, 

 and on several of the bulls we killed in October there were patches of it 



