“The wood buffalo is stated to be very scarce, and only found north of the Saskatchewan and on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains.  It never ventures into the open plains.  The prairie buffalo, on the contrary, generally avoids the woods in summer and keeps to the open country; but in winter they are frequently found in the woods of the Little Souris, Saskatchewan, the Touchwood Hills, and the aspen groves on the Qu’Appelle.  There is no doubt that formerly the prairie buffalo ranged through open woods almost as much as he now does through the prairies.”

Mr. Harrison S. Young, an officer of the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company, stationed at Fort Edmonton, writes me as follows in a letter dated October 22, 1887:  “In our district of Athabasca, along the Salt River, there are still a few wood buffalo killed every year; but they are fast diminishing in numbers, and are also becoming very shy.”

In Prof.  John Macoun’s “Manitoba and the Great Northwest,” page 342, there occurs the following reference to the wood buffalo:  “In the winter of 1870 the last buffalo were killed north of Peace River; but in 1875 about one thousand head were still in existence between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers, north of Little Slave Lake.  These are called wood buffalo by the hunters, but diner only in size from those of the plain.”

In the absence of facts based on personal observations, I may be permitted to advance an opinion in regard to the wood buffalo.  There is some reason for the belief that certain changes of form may have taken place in the buffaloes that have taken up a permanent residence in rugged and precipitous mountain regions.  Indeed, it is hardly possible to understand how such a radical change in the habitat of an animal could fail, through successive generations, to effect certain changes in the animal itself.  It seems to me that the changes which would take place in a band of plains buffaloes transferred to a permanent mountain habitat can be forecast with a marked degree of certainty.  The changes that take place under such conditions in cattle, swine, and goats are well known, and similar causes would certainly produce similar results in the buffalo.

The scantier feed of the mountains, and the great waste of vital energy called for in procuring it, would hardly produce a larger buffalo than the plains-fed animal, who acquires an abundance of daily food of the best quality with but little effort.

We should expect to see the mountain buffalo smaller in body than the plains animal, with better leg development, and particularly with stronger hind quarters.  The pelvis of the plains buffalo is surprisingly small and weak for so large an animal.  Beyond question, constant mountain climbing is bound to develop a maximum of useful muscle and bone and a minimum of useless fat.  If the loss of mane sustained by the African lions who live in bushy localities may be taken as an index, we should expect the bison of the mountains,