Losh Rides. 
133 
either because of their deformed shape, or else because they had never 
seene them. Their masters have no other riches nor substance : of them 
they eat, they drinke, they apparel, they sliooe themselves. And of 
their hides they make many things, as houses, shooes, apparell, and 
ropes. To bee short, they make so many things of them as they have 
neede of, or as many as suffice them in the use of this life.” ( Hakluyt , 
vol. iii. p. 455.) 
Topsell (p. 57) declares that the ancient writers con¬ 
fused the Buffe with the elk and the rangifer 
(reindeer), but the picture he gives is not 
unlike that of the elk :— 
“ The head of this beast,” he writes, “ is like the head of a hart, 
and his homes branched or ragged, his body for the most part like a 
wild oxes, his haire deepe and harshe like a beares, his hide is so hard 
that the Scithians make breastplates which no dart can pierce 
through. His colour for the most part like an asses, but when he 
is hunted or feared he changeth his hue into whatever thing he seeth: 
as among trees he is like them; among greene boughs he seemeth 
greene; amongst rocks of stone he is translated into their colour also; 
as it is generally by most writers affirmed.” 
While admitting the difficulty of hair being so suddenly 
affected by the sensations of the animal, this author 
observes that, as the buffe has the face, so has he the fear 
of a hart, but in a higher degree. 
The buffe, or losh, whether bison or buffalo, was an 
animal greatly valued for its hide. In a letter of the 
Moscovite Company in London to their Russian ageuts, 
1560, the following instructions are given:— 
“ Our mind is you should provide for the next ships, five hundred 
losh hides, of them that be large and faire, and thickest in hand, and 
to be circumspect in the choosing, that you buy them that bee killed 
in season and well dryed and whole. If they be good we may sell 
them here for sixteene shillings and better the piece. We would have 
the whole skinnes, that is the neckes and legges withall, for these what 
you sent now lacke their neckes and legges. Neverthelesse for this 
time you must send them as you may get them. If you could find 
the meanes that the haire might bee clipped off them, they woulde 
not take so much room in the shippes as they doe.” ( Hukluyt, 
vol. i. p. 342.) 
