280 NORTHERN ZOOLOGY. 
limestone and sandstone formations, lying between the great Rocky Mountain 
ridge and the lower eastern chain of primitive rocks, are the only districts in 
the fur countries that are frequented by the bison. In these comparatively level 
tracts there is much prairie land, on which they find good grass in the summer; 
and also many marshes overgrown with bulrushes and carices, which supply them 
with winter food. Salt springs and lakes also abound on the confines of. the 
limestone, and there are several well known salt-licks where. bison are sure to be 
found at all seasons of the year.. They do not frequent any of the districts formed 
of primitive rocks, and the limits of their range to the eastward within .the 
Hudson Bay Company’s territories may be nearly correctly marked on the map by 
a line commencing in longitude 97° on the Red River which flows into the south-end 
of Lake Winipeg, crossing the Saskatchewan to the westward of Basquiau hill, 
and running from thence by the Athapescow to the east end of Great Slave Lake. 
Their migrations to the westward were formerly limited by the Rocky Mountain 
range, and they are still unknown in New Caledonia and on the shores of the 
Pacific to the north of the Columbia river; but of late years they have found out 
a passage across the mountains near the sources of the Saskatchewan, and their 
numbers to the westward are said to be annually increasing. In 1806, when 
Lewis and Clark crossed the mountains at the head of the Missouri, bison’skins 
were an important article of traffic between the inhabitants on the east side and 
the natives to the westward. . Further to the southward, in New. Mexico and Cali- 
fornia, the bison appears to be numerous on both sides of the Rocky Mountain 
chain. One of the earliest accounts we have of the animal is by Hernandez; and 
Recchus’ edition of his observations, or rather commentary upon them, is illustrated 
by an engraving which seems to have been made from a rude sketch of the bison, 
altered by the European artist to a closer resemblance with the European ox. 
Hennepin, in the narrative of his discovery of Louisiana, and his travels through 
that country between the years 1669 and 1682, gives a very good description of the 
bison, together with a figure, which is apparently a copy of that of Recchus. It 
does not appear to have excited much attention in Europe until lately, when several 
‘specimens, having been imported into England, were exhibited under the attractive 
title of Bonasus, which, though described by the ancients, was asserted to have been 
lost to the moderns until recognised in the American animal, The American 
bison has in fact much resemblance to the aurochs of the Germans (Bos urus, 
Bopper) identified by Cuvier with the donassus of Aristotle, the dison of 
Pausanias and Pliny, and the zrus of Caesar, and which, down to the reign of 
ar 
