56 
THE BISON. 
the Woods. Its range in the United States formerly embraced 
a considerable area west of the Rocky mountains—its recent 
remains having been found in Oregon as far west as the Blue 
mountains, and further south it occupied the Great Slave Lake 
basin, extending westward even to the Sierra Nevada moun¬ 
tains, while less than fifty years since it existed over the head¬ 
waters of the Green and Grand rivers, and other sources of 
the Colorado. East of the Rocky mountains its range ex¬ 
tended southward far beyond the Rio Grande, and eastward 
through the region drained by the Ohio and its tributaries. 
Its northern limit, east of the Mississippi, was the great lakes, 
along which it extended to near the eastern end of Lake Erie. 
It appears not to have occurred south of the Tennessee river, 
and only to a limited extent east of the Alleghenies, chiefly 
in the upper districts of North and South Carolina. 
“ Its present range embraces two distinct and comparatively 
small areas. The southern is chiefly limited to Western Kan- 
* 
