178 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



dark-brown woolly fur. Long, darker hair on the head 

 hides the eyes, ears, and bases of the horns, while a 

 shaggy coat or mane clothes the neck, withers, shoulders, 

 and thence downward to the knees. There is a long 

 beard beneath the chin, and the tail is tufted at its end. 

 The length of the head and body to the root of the tail 

 may exceed ten feet by two or three inches. 



The buffalo should be a very interesting animal to all 

 American citizens on account of the great danger which 

 exists of its becoming utterly extinct. Only thirty-one 

 years ago they still numbered several millions, more than 

 iive millions at the least, whereas in 1889 there were but 

 some twenty individuals in Texas, a few in Colorado, Wyo- 

 ming, Montana, and Dakota, and two hundred preserved 

 by the Government in the Yellowstone National Park. "We 

 have, however, recently been assured that some private 

 individual citizens in the United States are trying to 

 preserve and propagate the buffalo. Canada, which now 

 exhibits such interesting examples of political and social 

 " survival," has been practically conservative as regards 

 the bison, since it appears that some 500 individuals of a 

 race known as the wood bison still survive there. We 

 trust that all lovers of Nature will have cause to be 

 grateful to the Fiftieth Congress, which at its last ses- 

 sion voted $200,000 for the establishment of a National 

 Zoological Park on a grand scale in the District of 

 Columbia, with the intention that American quadrupeds 

 now threatened with extermination should enjoy a 

 luxurious captivity, when it is hoped they may breed. 

 If this project be duly cai'ried out, we may be confident 

 that the bison will breed there, since it has been known 

 to breed in captivity as long ago as 1786. 



Strange to say, this animal seems to have been first 

 seen by Europeans, not in a wild state, but preserved in 



