BUFFALO. 



Bos A mericanus, — Gmelin. 



SO much has been written during late years about the Buffalo, 

 that almost every one is familiar with its history, and it is 

 well that it is so, for he will very shortly exist only in the annals of 

 the past. 



The American Bison is known by but one name throughout 

 the continent of America, being rarely spoken of by any other 

 " appellation than that of the Buffalo. 



Since the comparatively recent enormous exodus of population 

 from the eastern portions of our country, and influx of the same 

 Into the formerly sacred and forbidden territories of the red man, 

 the natural history of that vast territory west of the Missouri has 

 been made more definite and clear, and its resources developed. 

 In the acquisition of our knowledge of the former, the Buffalo 

 has played the most important part. 



Fossil remains of a Bison of prehistoric times have been found 

 in the same country now occupied by the present comparatively 

 diminutive species. These gigantic animals were probably six to 

 eight times the size of our present species and must have been fit 

 contemporaries of the Mastodon, and the enormous sloths which 

 in Post-Pliocene times inhabited our continent. The prehistoric 

 man, to hunt an animal of these proportions, should have been as 

 large as the fabled giants. In former times the Bison occupied 

 the major part of the North American continent ; their migrations 

 extending from Mexico on the South, far up into the present British 

 Possessions, and their eastern and western limits being the States 

 of California and Oregon, Virginia and the Carolinas respectively. 

 But our authentic history of the animal dates back only to the 

 earlier part of the past century when it had been driven west of 

 the Mississippi. The range of the Buffalo in 1830, had been nar- 



