790 The American Naturalist. [September, 
Indeed, when we come to investigate further, we find that even 
from the earliest times the great and ferocious American buffalo 
had been subdued, domesticated in fact,and even crossed with the 
farm bovine. This buffalo blood doubtless runs in the veins of 
a proportion of the common bovines of to-day as another “alloy,” 
showing how easily his type could be absorbed. 
When we press this point to its utmost we find that the buffalo 
is fully amenable, to the domesticating process; and further that 
he demeans and conducts himself similarly and as truly as his 
more sedate and cooler-blooded bovine cousins. What is suitable 
to the one is suitable to the other.! 
Leaving that most important point of domesticability, it might 
yet be objected that we would have no use for the species. Well, 
we assert that the buffalo, considering the conditions under which 
he has been reared—as seen and delineated by Catlin—on his 
native heath,’ is far and away ahead of the common bovine as a 
beef animal, naturally fed. Compare this animal in his natural 
bisontine condition with the fleshless results among the bovines 
under the same conditions, in spring or at any period, on the 
former’s prairie or the latter’s ranche or range, and our assertion 
is at once borne out. This, remember, on “grass alone.” Here, 
then, we have in the buffalo an animal exactly evolved out of his 
environment to fill the true American beef-producing animal's 
place, without any recourse to the tricks of shelter or winter 
fodder, as conceived by man for the benefit of a more cosmo- 
politan constructed bovine. We have gone far enough on these 
two lines to bring us to the great conclusions as to the buffalo 
necessary for our plea, viz: 
1. His amenability to domesticity being perfect. 
2. His economic value being incomparable. 
1See article by the writer, "The American Buffalo: Its Past and Future,” in the 
aa: M: number of Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes. Vinton & Co., Lon- : 
don, En 
? See Report of National Museum, 1886-87, on '' The Extermination of the American 
Bison," by William T. Hornada day. 
