which, at most, are worth but little more than the cost of gathering. It is said that during the season of 1872-73, not less than two thousand hunters were engaged in hunting the buffalo along the line of the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fé railroad alone; and that during this year not less than two hundred and fifty thousand buffaloes were slain, simply for their hides, their carcasses being left untouched on the plains. In a few years the buffaloes were wholly annihilated over hundreds of square miles of territory; and now, as if to hide even the evidence of their former existence there, their very bones are being gathered up and shipped to eastern markets for the manufacture of manurial phosphates. The best available statistics indicate an average annual destruction of between three and four millions for the last thirty or forty years. At this rate of decrease it is evident that the complete extermination of the buffalo will be soon effected; and thus an animal which, but a few years since, was the most numerous of its size in the world, will be swept out of existence.

The American bison, with his huge bulk, his immense shaggy mane, and peculiarly vicious-looking eyes, presents a far more formidable and dangerous aspect than his real character warrants, he being in reality timid and inoffensive. With lowered head and sullen mien, the old bulls will face an approaching enemy with a great show of determination and bravery, only to flee most ignominiously if their threatening demonstrations fail to appall their assailant. Indeed, one's nerve is put severely to the test when approaching a herd of these formidable-looking beasts for the first time. Only when wounded, however, and sorely pressed, will they turn upon their pursuer; and then woe be to the luckless horse and rider, or the more helpless footman, if they fail to escape the onslaught of one of these furious beasts. Ordinarily, however, they are far less dangerous to encounter than the half-wild domestic cattle of the Texas plains.

Like most bovine animals, the bison is sluggish and stupid, lacking in great measure the sagacity that so effectually protects most wild animals; and he hence falls an easy prey to his human foes. If the hunter is careful to approach the herd from the leeward, he usually has little difficulty in getting near it, the bison being not easily frightened by the sight of man or by the report of firearms, while the scent of an enemy, if unseen and a mile distant, will set

them fleeing in headlong haste. It thus happens that the hunter, in stalking the buffalo, approaches easily within close range, even without cover, by simply creeping on the ground; and with a breech-loading arm, loading without rising, often succeeds in killing from five or six to a score or more, before the herd finally takes to flight. If it slightly recede, the hunter creeps up under cover of the slain, and continues his murderous work. So indifferent are the buffaloes to the death of their companions, or so stupidly unconscious of what has befallen them, that they will not only stand and see them shot down around them, but the living have been known to playfully gore the dead, so little do they comprehend the situation. A single hunter will thus often kill fifteen to thirty at a single "stand," and sometimes sixty to eighty in a day. A hunter who acts as shooter for the party to which he belongs, will frequently kill two thousand to three thousand in a single season.

A moving herd of buffaloes will blindly follow their leaders, those in the rear pressing on unconscious of the danger into which they sometimes force their comrades at the front. Herds thus rush into the pounds prepared for their destruction by the Indians, or are decoyed by the same wily foes to the brinks of precipices, the presence of which those at the front discover too late to avoid, being pressed on by the main body of the panic-stricken herd, who in turn follow their leaders in the unlooked-for fatal leap. Again, in crossing treacherous streams, whole herds will heedlessly rush into the quicksands, or with similar blindness dash across the track of an approaching railway train. It has hence been said, and with some degree of truth, that the buffalo is endowed with only the smallest degree of instinct, and that this little seems rather to lead him into difficulties than out of them. This, however, is not quite true; since the blind rushing of a herd into danger results not so much from the stupidity of those in the front ranks as from their inability to turn aside after the danger is discovered, in consequence of the irresistible mass behind, unconscious of danger, forcing them onward.

As may be well imagined, the habits of the buffaloes, in their undisturbed daily lives, are not far different from those of grazing herds of domestic cattle. They indulge in similar gambols, and, when belligerent, in similar blustering demonstrations. The bulls are excessively fond of pawing the ground and of throwing up the earth on their horns, which they readily accomplish by lowering

themselves upon one knee. Particularly bovine also is the satisfaction they take in rubbing themselves against whatever will oppose resistance, whether it be rocks, trees, bushes, or the corner of a hardened clay-bank; the telegraph poles, however, which have been erected along the railroads that cross their range, afford them especial delight as convenient scratching-posts, and may be seen as well smoothed and covered with tufts of hair and grease from their unctuous hides, as are the posts about a farmer's cattle-yard. But what is very unlike anything in the habits of domestic cattle is their propensity to roll themselves on the ground; which, notwithstanding their seemingly inconvenient form, they accomplish with the greatest ease. But their greatest pleasure consists in rolling in the mud, or in "wallowing" as it is termed, from which exercise they arise. looking more like an animated mass of dripping mud than their former selves. The object of these peculiar ablutions is doubtless to cool. their heated bodies and to free themselves from troublesome insects; the coating of adhesive mud they thus obtain securing them immunity, for many hours after, from the attacks of the herds of mosquitoes and flies with which they are so much harassed.

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Despite the apparently unwieldy form and awkward, lumbering gait of the bison, his speed far exceeds the progress he appears to make, while his endurance is so great that the fleetness and bottom of a well-trained horse will be severely tested in an attempt to overtake him. When pursued, or when urged on by thirst, rough ground and a tumble now and then seems scarcely to retard him; plunging down the steep sides of abrupt ravines and up the opposite slopes, as though such irregularities of the surface formed no obstacles to his progress. The buffaloes also exhibit astonishing expertness at climbing; often, when in quest of water, making precipitous descents, where it would be impossible to follow with a horse, and even where a man would clamber down with difficulty. Ordinarily, however, the bison shows commendable sagacity in his choice of routes, usually choosing the easiest grades and the most direct courses; so that a "buffalo trail" may be depended upon as affording the most direct road through the region it traverses.

That the buffalo is capable of complete domestication has been most thoroughly demonstrated; but as yet there have been no persistent, systematic attempts to perpetuate either a pure or a mixed race, nor to test its value as a draught-animal, or for other purposes.

That the buffalo is susceptible of domestication, and that it will breed freely with our domestic cattle, was well known in Kentucky and West Virginia nearly a century ago. As early as 1750 buffalo calves had frequently been taken by the settlers, and brought up among the the domestic cattle; being kept, however, mainly as objects of curiosity. According to Gallatin, a mixed breed was quite common ninety years ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia; but they gradually became merged into the common domestic stock, through lack of a fresh supply of the wild blood. Other writers also refer to its susceptibility of domestication, and of the probability of its forming, though crossing with the domestic cattle, a superior breed of working oxen. More recently a most thorough test of the domesticability of the buffalo was made in Kentucky, by Mr. Robert Wickliffe, who bred them for a period of over thirty years, he obtaining his wild stock from the Upper Missouri country. The experiment was entirely successful, but the herd at last became merged with the common stock through neglect. The mixed breed proved larger than either the wild or tame stock, but were inferior in milking qualities, though they gave promise of forming a stronger breed of working oxen.

As yet no attempt appears to have been made to perpetuate an unmixed domestic race of the buffalo. Such a project, however, is not only feasible, but would doubtless be attended with profitable results. Experience shows that even the first generation are no more dangerous to handle than ordinary cattle; being far more tractable, in fact, than the half-wild stock of the Texas plains. If they should chance to prove incapable of rivaling our domestic race—the result of centuries of careful breeding-it might still be a profitable, as well as an attractive addition to our domesticated animals. Its capabilities as a mixed race should certainly be thoroughly tested, and no time is more favorable than the present. Many of our frontier settlers in Kansas, Colorado and Texas, live on the very borders of its range, thus enabling them to supply themselves with the young animals necessary for the enterprise with little cost or trouble, while the experiment could be tried under the most favorable circumstances possible, avoiding all the risks attending change of habitat and acclimation.

If the buffalo is doomed to be soon added to the list of animals known only in history or from their fossil remains, he will not dis

appear without having played an important part in the history of the region he inhabited, or without having contributed something to the advance of civilization. After having formed for thousands of years the main subsistence of hundreds of thousands of the native inhabitants of this continent, his products have added greatly to the comfort of more civilized humanity, and rendered possible the exploration and development of our vast plains at a much less sacrifice of comfort and pecuniary means that could otherwise have been the case. Besides furnishing the pioneer settler with a sure means of subsistence until other resources became available, he has furnished fresh food to numerous private and government exploring parties, where it could not have been otherwise accessible. Hardly less important to the explorer has been its dried excrement-the bois des Vaches of the Voyageur-which has proved an unfailing and invaluable substitute for wood, over the hundreds of thousands of square miles of treeless plains. In the narratives of military reconnoissances and other government explorations of this region, as well as those of private explorers and travelers, the first meeting with "buffalo-chips" is chronicled as an item of importance, intimately affecting the welfare of the party; as it not only generally gives promise of soon meeting with herds of the animals themselves, but ensures fuel for the camp-fire and for culinary purposes, in regions where supplies of firewood are either precarious or entirely wanting..

The presence in any country of immense herds of wild herbivorous animals, is of course incompatible with the simultaneous existence there of agriculture, and that the bison had hardly disappeared from the more fertile portions of our plains and prairies before vast fields of wheat and corn appeared over the same areas, shows that the time for his restriction had already come. If, however, he is allowed to become extinct without some effort to preserve for a time his existence in the more worthless portions of the public domain— portions that for a long time, if not forever, will be useless for agricultural purposes-it will be a truly lamentable and disgraceful fact in our nation's history.

From the facts already given it is evident that the buffalo cannot long survive unaided by government protection, and it is greatly to our disgrace that nothing has as yet been done to check the wholesale and almost useless murder of these defenseless beasts. No ade