788 The American Naturalist. [September, 
is less, positively, than that claimed by even some of our most 
improved domestic bovine races. The enumeration takes into 
account, of course, all individual and scattered specimens in dif- 
ferent foreign Zoological Gardens, which are uninfluential on the 
main body on which depends the fate—so doubtful now—of the 
species. This main body, this specific entity, this restricted, 
smothered force, on which the future fate of recuperation depends, 
—that is, taking into account those only which we know of that » 
can, or could, be utilized for ordinary breeding purposes,—the 
most that we could liberally estimate such a force at would 
not be far from about two hundred and fifty. Two-and-a-half 
hundred: can we do anything for you to redeem the obloquy of 
the past? Is it possible to preserve that trivial remnant? It 
would seem presumption to make any assertion to that effect 
in the face of the transforming rapidity of the extermination 
from the many countless hordes to the few insignificant herds. 
Those most interested in the fate of this remnant have, I 
fear, dire misgivings as to the result. For an animal that 
was so long so absolutely monarch of his prairie domain,—till the 
relentless and vicious paleface and the no less destructively 
inclined redman, finding him generally such an easy prey to their 
various refined and rude means of murder, made so much more 
resistless by an animal that had not yet learned the fear of, or to 
beware of, man’s ruse or craft, reduced him to his present state 
of insignificance,—for such an animal to be expected to re-create 
itself into some more enduring adjunct of his old enemy's wants, 
would seem unnatural. The products that were the incitement to 
this awful slaughter had to be piled almost horizon-high, and 
then it was not enough to subdue the insatiable, inconsiderate 
greed of the so-called honorable hunter who followed such a 
legitimate calling. The lucre-returning “product” was only a 
trifling portion of the whole. The waste was outrageous, stu- 
pendous in its extravagance. Hence the Assyrian-like destruc- 
tion. For an animal that had reared itself through centuries’ 
implantation of nature’s own freedom, instinct, unrestraint, and 
environment, to be dragged through such abject degradation, and 
be asked to survive, would seem an insult to this lagger behind, 
kd 
