The American Bison 
5 
Lithuania, Roumania, and the Caucasus, where it is arti- 
ficially preserved, and the American Bison, which also now 
survives only in a semiferal condition, with the exception 
of the bands of so-called Wood Bison ranging about the 
Great Slave Lake in British America, and numbering 
altogether perhaps five hundred head. 
Bison bison. The American Bison or Buffalo. 
Bos bison Linn., Syst. Nat., loth ed., i., p. 72 (1758). 
Type locality. — Mountains of the Southeastern United States. 
Literature on History and Habits. Allen, " History of the North 
American Bison," Ann. Rep., U. S. Geol. Sur. Terr., 1875, PP- 443~ 
587 (1877). Hornaday, " Extermination of the American Bison," 
Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1887, pp. 369-548 (1889). Thompson Seton, 
"The American Bison or Buffalo," Scribner's Magazine, xL, p. 385 
(1906). 
Measurements. — Height at shoulders of full grown male, 5 ft, 
8 ins., of female, 4 ft. 8 ins.; weight of male, 1800 lbs., of female, 
800 lbs. 
Description. — Head, neck, chest, and shoulders blackish brown, 
sometimes black without any brown; remainder of coat paler, 
grading on rump to cinnamon. Muzzle, hoofs, and horns black. 
Distribution. — The range of the Bison originally extended al- 
most to the Atlantic Coast from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and to 
the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and from the Mackenzie 
River region, in North Lat. 62° south into northern Mexico. To- 
day, with the exception of the above mentioned herds in the Far 
North there is probably not a single wild example left anywhere. 
They are undoubtedly all gone in Colorado, the last survivors 
having been those in the Lost Park region in Park County. 
Habits. — The Buffalo were always found in herds of 
greater or less size, but until their extermination on the 
plains their numbers were very great, and the herds corre- 
spondingly large, composed of thousands of individuals. 
Not much information has been left about the habits of the 
animal east of the Mississippi, in which region they had 
been exterminated by the beginning of the last century. 
On the western plains they wandered in herds which seem 
to have been in a sense merely parts of one great body. They 
