286 BIO GAME OF NORTH AMERICA. 



of five hundred grains or more in weight; and the stupid 

 Buffaloes, not seeing anything in the whole range of their 

 vision save a very inno,cent-looking little smoke-cloud, and 

 (the wind favoring the hunter) hearing but a slight report, 

 w^ould often stand until, one by one, to the last member of 

 the band, they would be piled in unsparing slaughter on 

 their native plains. 



Following the line of the newly constructed Pacific rail- 

 road, as a continually advancing base of operations, the 

 skin-hunter "carried the war into Africa," and the shat- 

 tered remnants of the once mighty herds, exposed to the 

 converging fire of hungry Indians and greedy whites, 

 melted like snow under a summer's sun. 



The war was ended — the chase was done; whitening 

 bones and bleaching skxills alorie marked the path of the 

 leaden cyclone of suffering and death, and the Bison of 

 America, together with the Mastodon, and the Great Auk 

 of the northern seas, lives only in history. 



The impulsive and pardonable wrath of the American 

 sportsman, who, as he contemplates the extermination of 

 the Buffalo, feels inclined to hold up to universal execra- 

 tion the Buffalo-skin-hunter, is little felt or shared by the 

 philosophic naturalist. Much as the latter may be inclined 

 to regret the disappearance of so interesting and valuable 

 an animal, a careful consideration of the subject prompts 

 him to graceful acceptance of the inevitable in the disap- 

 pearance of the Buffalo, as he fully realizes that the pres- 

 ence of vast hordes of animals as gigantic, as stupid, and 

 as intractable as the Bison, would inevitably have been, 

 if stringently protected by law, a menace and hindrance to 

 advancing civilization. Only small bands of these animals 

 could have been secured from the eager hands of unscru- 

 pulous, law-breaking hunters, both white and red, as in the 

 case of the small band already mentioned in the Yellow- 

 stone National Park, or in the guarded seclusion of private 

 ranches or parks. 



The student of Indian history, also (who will not have 

 failed to remember that permanent peace with the Indian 



