98 THE FORMER RANGE OF THE BUFFALO. 
Far West “the prairies are in some places whitened with 
skulls of the buffalo, dried and bleached by the summer’s sun 
the frosts aud snows of those severe latitudes in winter.”* 
doubt their skulls and other bones were as plenty upon the pra 
of Illinois a hundred years ago. It seems to be the object of na- 
ture as soon as possible after life is extinct to destroy the rem 
of every organized creature, and to throw back its component p 
into the rounds of circulation again, and it is only a very rare a 
cident that even the hardest parts, such as hoofs, horns, teeth, ete 
are fossilized. I presume that not one in every fifty thousand, 
the buffaloes that were in Illinois during the eighteenth centur 
will stand a chance to attest its former existence by a single bo 
at the beginning of the twentieth century. Large numbers of ti 
Elk, Cervus Canadensis, grazed upon the prairies of Illinois, í 
will be seen by the above extracts, and Audubon says, that a£ 
were still to be found in Kentucky, and across the Ohio River 
Illinois, at the time he settled in that state. Their horns, ™ 
from their size and hardness, were better calculated to resist ee 
effects of time than the buffalo, are sometimes, but rarely, i 
in our state. Two of them were picked up this year, 
County, within ten miles of the Illinois River. 
animals which have lived on the surface, it seems to 7 
care to provide the means of disencumbering the habitable 
lying above and below the water, of those myriads of th 7 
skeletons of animals, and those massive trunks of trees, * 
would otherwise soon choke up every river and fill every © 
To prevent this inconvenience she employs the heat of the 
and moisture of the atmosphere, the dissolving power of c 
and other acids, the grinding teeth and gastric juices of 4i 
peds, birds, reptiles, and fish and the agency of many ° 
vertebrata.”+ No better illustration of these words of Sir 
Lyell can be found, than that of the scarcity of the > 
. the buffalo and other large mammals that once formed & 
the fauna of the great prairies of the Upper Mississippi- k 
NOTE:—Teeth of the Bison have been found in the Qi y clays of GA 
N. 
