THE EUROPEAN BISON 
widely distributed in the Pleistocene formations of Europe. Another 
closely similar fossil (Bison antiguus) is found in northern America, and 
the two were perhaps local races of a then circumpolar species, direct an- 
cestor of the modern forms. The third is Bison latifrons, a more ancient 
type of gigantic size, with horns that must have spread ten or twelve feet. 
Additional fossil species have since been described. 
The wisent (or ‘‘zubr,”’ as it is known to Slavic-speaking men) 
was once widely distributed over Europe and neighboring parts 
of Asia, except on the Russian steppes, but was 
gradually exterminated, until long ago all that re- 
mained were small herds in the Lithuanian forests and in the 
Caucasus, which were protected on imperial estates, and now 
number less than one thousand individuals. It is a wild, shy, 
pugnacious, forest-keeping animal, living mainly on leaves and 
twigs, not gathering in large companies, nor capable of useful 
domestication, nor have crosses between it and other cattle 
yielded encouraging results. A fine pair were living in the 
New York Zodlogical Park in 1905. 
The American bison or buffalo is perhaps on the average not 
so tall, but more robust and shaggy than the wisent; its life, 
however, was in great contrast to that of its Euro- a ierican 
pean relative. Our bison belonged to plains and Bison. 
prairies; and although some penetrated the forests east 
to the heights of the Alleghanies, and roamed in the West 
throughout the wooded Rockies. the great body were 
grazers, and kept to the plains —the bunch-grass country — 
from Great Slave Lake southward to the Texas coast and the 
northern interior of Mexico, and as far west as eastern Utah 
and Nevada. 
In this open country, where family bands could sight one 
another, and were naturally attracted together, and where 
wolves forced them to combine for common security, gregarious 
habits foreign to their sylvan ancestors were inevitably formed; 
and latterly enormous herds congregated during the spring and 
249 
Wisent. 
