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 olBonasus, 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, 

 Bodd#:rt) identified by Cuvier with the bonassus of Aristotle, the bison of 

 Pausanias and Pliny, and the urus of Csesar, and which, down to the reign of 



