iniFFAl.C ). 
35 
the Buffalo is in colour between a dark umber, and liver-shining brown ; 
as the hair lengthens during winter, the tips become paler. 
Young male, tw'elvc months old. 
A uni form dingy brown colour, with a dark brown stripe of twisted woolly 
npi-ight hairs, extending from the head over the neck shoulders and back 
to the insertion of the tail. The hairs on the forehead, which form the 
enormous mass on the head of the adult, are just beginning to be deve- 
loped. 
Under Ihe throat and along the chest the hairs extend in a narrow line 
oi' about three inches in length ; the bush at the end of the tail is tolerably 
well developed. Hairs on the whole body short and woolly. 
A calf, six weeks old, presents the same general appearance, but is 
more woolly. The legs, especially near the hoofs, are of a lighter colour 
than the adult. 
A calf taken from the body of a cow, in September, was covered with 
woolly hair; the uniform brownish, or dim jmllow, strongly resembling 
the young of a domesticated cow. 
HABITS. 
Whether we consider this noble animal as an object of the chase, or as 
an article of food for man, it is decidedly the most important of all our con- 
temporary American quadrupeds ; and as we can no longer see the gi- 
gantic mastodon passing over the broad savannas, or laving his enormous 
sides in the deep rivers of our wide-spread land, we will consider the 
Buffalo as a link, (perhaps sooner to be forever lost than is generally sup- 
]iosed,) which to a slight degree yet connects us with larger American ani- 
mals, belonging to extinet creations. 
But ere we endeavour to place before you the living and breathing herds 
of Buffaloes, you must journey with us in imagination to the vast west- 
ern piaiiies, the secluded and almost inaccessible valleys of the Rocky 
Mountain chain, and the arid and nearly impassable deserts of the western 
table lands of our country ; and here we may be allowed to express our 
deep, though umavailing regret, that the world now contains only few and 
imperfect remains of the lost races, of which we have our sole Imowledge 
through the researches and profound deductions of geologists ; and even 
though our knowledge of the osteology of the more recently exterminated 
species be sufficient to place them before our “ mind’s eye,” we have no de- 
scription and no figures of the once living and moving, but now de- 
parted possessors of these woods, plains, mountains and waters, in which, 
