1890.] The American Bison of the Future. 791 
II. 
Having come to this most important conclusion, that in the 
American buffalo we have an animal superbly endowed by nature, 
not by artifice, to fill the bovine requirements of this country, 
made ready to hand, but his thorough adaptability unperceived 
or selfishly overlooked, we have now to consider the possibility 
of realizing our dream: z., establishing his destiny as an animal 
of such utility as is proved he possesses. We can resign the old 
romance, but we can not risk the reality in so far as that can be 
preserved and enhanced. The buffalo, as he has been known, 
will be known no more. Established in the place his destinators 
would prepare for him, he will be an entirely different-natured— 
and even nurtured—being from that from which he was forcibly 
exiled; and, fulfilling the mission proposed for him, he will become 
greatly modified from the noble monarch of old. This is inevi- 
table and consequent. We see the effect of the same treatment 
on the bovine species, which was also a wild species subdued at a 
comparatively recent period. Even the wild white cattle of 
Britain, kept in the parks from the earliest times, the most direct 
descendants of Bos urus ( primigenius), are greatly modified from 
their ancestors by the restricted area and nature of their confine- 
ment. So itis with the truest representative of the buffalo in 
Europe, the Aurochs (Bison priscus) of the Lithuanian forests. 
But for all these instances we believe that in the buffalo of the 
future we shall, as the result of our judicious interference, our 
subduction and care, the resultant of his removal from his natural 
environment, see arise a new race thoroughly capable of enacting 
an undreamt-of career, and that with happier results than might 
formerly have been possible; for that former career of his was 
apparently doomed and destined to be sooner or later played out 
on the plains that witnessed his early glory. 
We have now to consider the species as itis, for our purpose; 
its numbers and how composed. The following list gives the 
location of the different herds and numbers they contain, fit for 
breeding purposes, in the United States. The location simply is 
