In the issue of Forest and Stream of June 14, 1888, Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, in an article entitled “The American Buffalo,” relates a very interesting experience with buffaloes which were pronounced to be of the “mountain” variety, and his observations on the animals are well worth reproducing here.  The animals (eight in number) were encountered on the northern slope of the Big Horn Mountains, in the autumn of 1877.  “We came upon them during a fearful blizzard of heavy hail, during which our animals could scarcely retain their feet.  In fact, the packer’s mule absolutely lay down on the ground rather than risk being blown down the mountain side, and my own horse, totally unable to face such a violent blow and the pelting hail (the stones being as large as big marbles), positively stood stock-still, facing an old buffalo bull that was not more than 25 feet in front of me. * * * Strange to say, this fearful gust did not last more than ten minutes, when it stopped as suddenly as it had commenced, and I deliberately killed my old buffalo at one shot, just where he stood, and, separating two other bulls from the rest, charged them down a rugged ravine.  They passed over this and into another one, but with less precipitous sides and no trees in the way, and when I was on top of the intervening ridge I noticed that the largest bull had halted in the bottom.  Checking my horse, an excellent buffalo hunter, I fired down at him without dismounting.  The ball merely barked his shoulder, and to my infinite surprise he turned and charged me up the hill. * * * Stepping to one side of my horse, with the charging and infuriated bull not 10 feet to my front, I fired upon him, and the heavy ball took him square in the chest, bringing him to his knees, with a gush of scarlet blood from his mouth and nostrils. * * *

“Upon examining the specimen, I found it to be an old bull, apparently smaller and very much blacker than the ones I had seen killed on the plains only a day or so before.  Then I examined the first one I had shot, as well as others which were killed by the packer from the same bunch, and I came to the conclusion that they were typical representatives of the variety known as the ‘mountain buffalo,’ a form much more active in movement, of slighter limbs, blacker, and far more dangerous to attack.  My opinion in the premises remains unaltered to-day.  In all this I may be mistaken, but it was also the opinion held by the old buffalo hunter who accompanied me, and who at once remarked when he saw them that they were ‘mountain buffalo,’ and not the plains variety. * * *

“These specimens were not actually measured by me in either case, and their being considered smaller only rested upon my judging them by my eye.  But they were of a softer pelage, black, lighter in limb, and when discovered were in the timber, on the side of the Big Horn Mountains.”

The band of bison in the Yellowstone Park must, of necessity, be of the so-called “wood” or “mountain” variety, and if by any chance one of its members ever dies of old age, it is to be hoped its skin may be carefully preserved and sent to the National Museum to throw some further light on this question.