THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
Vor. XXIV. SEPTEMBER, 1890. 285. 
A MEANS OF PRESERVING THE PURITY AND ES- 
TABLISHING A CAREER FOR THE AMERI- 
CAN BISON OF THE FUTURE. 
BY ROBERT C. AULD. 
I, 
HE American bison is, as it nearly always has been, and ever 
will be, possibly the most interesting and attractive of all 
mammals. The lamentable, outrageous war of extermination to 
which he has been subjected is certainly one atrocious specimen 
of man’s most wanton foolishness, for which he ought to blush. 
Doubtless that extermination is at last regarded with the keenest 
feelings of remorse; which, though now of so little avail, yet fill 
those who have latterly championed his cause with fond desires - 
for the recuperation of what is apparently almost a vanishing 
race. The American bison is, in his royalty, gone,—“ passed 
over" into history. The hardly even smoldering embers that 
remain,—can they be nursed, fanned into a greater brilliance that 
might give one the hope of their being revivified into a more 
life-like, enduring flame? 
From numbers that would have put into total insignificance the 
combined forces of all the various bovine species (and races), for 
instance, there now remain—how many? The very best that Mr. 
W. T. Hornaday can figure, they can only be marshalledat a total of 
one thousand and ninety-one in the entire world. This number 
