794 The Amerwan Naturalist. [September, 
Let us avail ourselves of the experience, now so well method- 
ized, of our forebears, the pioneers of improvement among the 
gentler bovine races. Their rescue from common obliteration 
was the Herd Book, and, in Great Britain at least, every distinét 
breed has now its register. The latest established ones have, 
practically, been the means of rescuing from obliteration certain 
valuable races. We learn an important lesson from this. 
But we imagine we hear a whisper: But we have so few to 
register. Patience! In collecting material for forming the founda- 
tion of such an undertaking, the number of the individuals com- 
pósing such foundation, even in the largest bovine breeds, 
numerically fell short, we imagine, of the number of individuals 
we buffalo men possess. Besides, our individuals are absolutely 
pure, and all up to the highest standard. It was not so with the 
bovine races. We have therefore the advantage of our cousins. 
Our subject is, if such a register were initiated to-day, at a point 
that it took at least a quarter of a century for the bovine improvers 
to accomplish. Of course it must be admitted that the bovines 
did not, could not, start with the certainty of absolute purity, 
because of the mixing between races previous to the initiating of 
these registers. In that our bovines had an advantage over us, 
as it relieved them considerably of the greatest and immediate 
danger of in-breeding, which they were able thence to resort to, 
but which we have to avoid. Is such a register possible for the 
the buffalo? Ithink so. Let us see. 
We start, we believe, with a larger “ foundation stock," and ab- 
solute purity—no sub-standards—as compared with the bovines : 
the two desirable essentials. We should therefore obtain a com- 
plete record of all the male and female buffaloes fit for breeding. 
We should have their relationship to each other noted, traced, 
and arranged in systematic manner. 
Whom would we look to to undertake this? We have the 
National Zoological Park, recently established at Washington 
from the very interest manifested in the “ passing of the buffalo, 7 
for the purpose of providing a receptacle for the remains of 
this noble representative of American fauna, and resuscitating it 
from total or immediate obliteration. As therefore such was the 
