THE FORMER RANGE OF THE BUFFALO. 
BY JOHN G. HENDERSON. 
——eo 
COMPARATIVELY speaking it will be but a short time until the 
buffalo, like the great Irish elk, the mastodon, the dodo, and other 
extinct animals, that have lived since the appearance of man upon 
the earth, will only be known to us by its bones, with this advan- 
tage, however, over the mastodon; its character, habits and terri- 
tory over which it formerly ranged are all accurately described by 
the historian and naturalist, as well as the causes which are leading 
to its extinction. As civilized man advances, the buffalo, the elk, 
the deer, the beaver, the otter, the bear, the panther, the wild-cat 
and wolf, and other members of the wilderness or prairie fauna, 
must give way to domesticated animals—animals whose original 
wildness and savageness have been subdued, and whose whole - 
organization, mental and physical, has been by thousands of years 
of contact with civilized man modified and changed so as to be- 
come subservient to his wishes and purposes. Some, as the buf- 
falo, elk and deer, are slaughtered for their flesh and hides ; others 
as-the etter and the beaver, for their skins alone; while still oth- 
ers, such as the panther, wild cat and wolf, are killed on account of 
their savageness, their existence being incompatible with the pres- 
ence of civilized man. 
For the buffalo are substituted our common cattle, for the wolf 
and wild cat, our domesticated dog and cat. Instead of clothing 
himself with the skins of the buffalo and deer, and living upon the 
fruits of the chase, the civilized man carries with him the sheep, 
from whose fleece he makes his coat for winter ; or rears the cotton 
plant, while from its fibres he manufactures his fabrics, instead of 
fraying the inner bark of the cedar or basswood for the same pur- 
pose, as did the aboriginal man 
But civilized man in his Bed into the wilderness, or in his 
advance upon the prairies, meets with many new forms of animal 
life and from their number he now and then selects some, such as 
the wild turkey, for example, which seems to have a pre-adaptation 
to domestication, and from such he adds to the stock of his domes- 
ticated species. . 
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