The following are the post-mortem dimensions of our specimen: 

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|                        BISON AMERICANUS.                      |
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|("Spike” bull, two years old; taken October 14, 1886.  Montana.)|
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|          (No. 15685, National Museum collection.)           |
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|                                           | Feet.| Inches.    |
|Height at shoulders                        |   4  |    2       |
|Length, head and body to insertion of tail |   7  |    7       |
|Depth of chest                             |   2  |    3       |
|Depth of flank                             |   1  |    7       |
|Girth behind fore leg                      |   6  |    8       |
|From base of horns around end of nose      |   2  |    81/2      |
|Length of tail vertebræ                    |   1  |            |
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7. The Adult Bull.—­In attempting to describe the adult male in the National Museum group, it is difficult to decide which feature is most prominent, the massive, magnificent head, with its shaggy frontlet and luxuriant black beard, or the lofty hump, with its showy covering of straw-yellow hair, in thickly-growing locks 4 inches long.  But the head is irresistible in its claims to precedence.

[Illustration:  SPIKE BULL.  From the group in the National Museum.  Reproduced from the Cosmopolitan Magazine, by permission of the publishers.]

It must be observed at this point that in many respects this animal is an exceptionally fine one.  In actual size of frame, and in quantity and quality of pelage, it is far superior to the average, even of wild buffaloes when they were most numerous and at their best.[30] In one respect, however, that of actual bulk, it is believed that this specimen may have often been surpassed.  When buffaloes were numerous, and not required to do any great amount of running in order to exist, they were, in the autumn months, very fat.  Audubon says:  “A large bison bull will generally weigh nearly 2,000 pounds, and a fat cow about 1,200 pounds.  We weighed one of the bulls killed by our party, and found it to reach 1,727 pounds, although it had already lost a good deal of blood.  This was an old bull, and not fat.  It had probably weighed more at some previous period."[31] Our specimen when killed (by the writer, December 6, 1886) was in full vigor, superbly muscled, and well fed, but he carried not a single pound of fat.  For years the never-ceasing race for life had utterly prevented the secretion of useless and cumbersome fat, and his “subsistence” had gone toward the development of useful muscle.  Having no means by which to weigh him, we could only estimate his weight, in which I called for the advice of my cowboys, all of whom were more or less familiar with the weight of range cattle, and one I regarded as an expert.  At first the estimated weight of the animal was fixed at 1,700 pounds, but with a constitutional fear of estimating over the truth, I afterward reduced it to 1,600 pounds.  This I am now well convinced was an error, for I believe the first figure to have been nearer the truth.