[Note 30:  In testimony whereof the following extract from a letter written by General Stewart Van Vliet, on March 10, 1897, to Professor Baird, is of interest: 

“MY DEAR PROFESSOR:  On the receipt of your letter of the 6th instant I saw General Sheridan, and yesterday we called on your taxidermist and examined the buffalo bull he is setting up for the Museum.  I don’t think I have ever seen a more splendid specimen in my life.  General Sheridan and I have seen millions of buffalo on the plains in former times.  I have killed hundreds, but I never killed a larger animal than the one in the possession of your taxidermist.”]

[Note 31:  Quadrupeds of North America, vol.  II, p. 44.]

In mounting the skin of this animal, we endeavored by every means in our power, foremost of which were three different sets of measurements, taken from the dead animal, one set to check another, to reproduce him when mounted in exactly the same form he possessed in life—­muscular, but not fat.

The color of the body and hindquarters of a buffalo is very peculiar, and almost baffles intelligent description.  Audubon calls it “between a dark umber and liver-shining brown.”  I once saw a competent artist experiment with his oil-colors for a quarter of an hour before he finally struck the combination which exactly matched the side of our large bull.  To my eyes, the color is a pale gray-brown or smoky gray.  The range of individual variation is considerable, some being uniformly darker than the average type, and others lighter.  While the under parts of most adults are dark brown or blackish brown, others are actually black.  The hair on the body and hinder parts is fine, wavy on the outside, and woolly underneath, and very dense.  Add to this the thickness of the skin itself, and the combination forms a covering that is almost impervious to cold.

The entire fore quarter region, e. g., the shoulders, the hump, and the upper part of the neck, is covered with a luxuriant growth of pale yellow hair (Naples yellow + yellow ocher), which stands straight out in a dense mass, disposed in handsome tufts.  The hair is somewhat woolly in its nature, and the ends are as even as if the whole mass had lately been gone over with shears and carefully clipped.  This hair is 4 inches in length.  As the living animal moved his head from side to side, the hair parted in great vertical furrows, so deep that the skin itself seemed almost in sight.  As before remarked, to comb this hair would utterly destroy its naturalness, and it should never be done under any circumstances.  Standing as it does between the darker hair of the body on one side and the almost black mass of the head on the other, this light area is rendered doubly striking and conspicuous by contrast.  It not only covers the shoulders, but extends back upon the thorax, where it abruptly terminates on a line corresponding to the sixth rib.

From the shoulder-joint downward, the color shades gradually into a dark brown until at the knee it becomes quite black.  The huge fore-arm is lost in a thick mass of long, coarse, and rather straight hair 10 inches in length.  This growth stops abruptly at the knee, but it hangs within 6 inches of the hoof.  The front side of this mass is blackish brown, but it rapidly shades backward and downward into jet-black.