4()4 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



oiio at the Zoological Gardens, London; one at Liverpool, England 

 (purchased of Hon. W. F. Cody in 1888) ; two at the Zoological Gar- 

 dens, Dresden ; one at the Zoological Gardens, Calcutta. 



Statistics of full-blood buffaloes in captivity January 1, 1889. 



Number kept for breeding purposes 216 



Number kept for exhibition 40 



Total pure-blood buffaloes in captivity 256 



Wild buffaloes under Government protection in the Yellowstone Park 200 



Number of mixed-breed buffalo — domestics 40 



There are, without doubt, a few half-breeds in Manitoba of which I 

 have no account. It is probable there are also a very few more captive 

 buffaloes scattered singly here and there which will be heard of later, 

 but the total will be a very small number, I am sure. 



PART II.— THE EXTERMINATION. 



I. Causes of the Extermination. 



The causes which led to the practical extinction (in a wild state, at 

 least) of the most economically valuable wild animal that ever inhab- 

 ited the American continent, are by no means obscure. It is well that 

 we should know precisely what they were, and by the sad fate of the 

 buffalo be warned in time against allowing similar causes to produce 

 the same results with our elk, antelope, deer, moose, caribou, mountain 

 sheep, mountain goat, walrus, and other animals. It will be doubly 

 deplorable if the remorseless slaughter we have witnessed during the 

 last twenty years carries with it no lessons for the future. A continu- 

 ation of the record we have lately made as wholesale game butchers 

 will justify posterity in dating us back with the mound-builders and 

 cave-dwellers, when man's only known function was to slay and eat. 



The primary cause of the buffalo's extermination, and the one which 

 embraced all others, was the descent of civilization, with all its ele- 

 ments of destructiveness, upon the whole of the country inhabited 

 by that animal. From the Great Slave Lake to the Kio Grande the 

 home of the buffalo was everywhere overrun by the man with a gun; 

 and, as has ever been the case, the wild creatures were gradually swept 

 away, the largest and most conspicuous forms being the first to go. 



The secondary causes of the extermination of the buffalo may be 

 catalogued as follows: 



(1) Man's reckless greed, his wanton destructiveness, and improvi- 

 dence in not husbanding such resources as come to him from the hand of 

 nature ready made. 



(2) The total and utterly inexcusable absence of protective measures 

 and agencies on the part of the ^National Government and of the West- 

 ern States and Territories. 



(3) The fatal preference on the part of hunters generally, both white 



