American big game in its haunts; the book of the Boone and Crockett club . all unmarred. Theodore Roosevelt. SI The Zoology of North American Big Game Among the many questions asked of the natur-alist by an inquiring public, few come up more per-sistently than What is the difference between abison and a buffalo; and which is the Americananimal? The interest which so many people find m ques-tions such as this must serve as a justification forthe present paper, which proposes no more thanto put into concise form what is known of thezoological relations of the animals which comewithin the special
American big game in its haunts; the book of the Boone and Crockett club . all unmarred. Theodore Roosevelt. SI The Zoology of North American Big Game Among the many questions asked of the natur-alist by an inquiring public, few come up more per-sistently than What is the difference between abison and a buffalo; and which is the Americananimal? The interest which so many people find m ques-tions such as this must serve as a justification forthe present paper, which proposes no more thanto put into concise form what is known of thezoological relations of the animals which comewithin the special interest of the Boone andCrockett Club. In doing this, conclusions must,as a rule, be stated with few of the facts uponwhich they rest, for to give more than the plainestof these would be to far outrun the possible limitsof space, and would furthermore lead into techni-cal details which to most readers are obscure andwearisome. Anyone who consults Dr. Johnsons famous dic-tionary will be illuminated by the definition ofcamelopard: An Abyssinian animal taller than an 52. BULL BISON. The Zoology of North American Big Game elephant, but not so thick, and even but a fewyears back all that was considered necessary toanswer the question, what is a bison ? was to statethat it is a wild ox with a shaggy mane and a humpon its shoulders, and the thing was done; but Inour own time a satisfactory answer must take ac-count of its relationship to other beasts, for wehave come to believe that the differences betweenanimals are simply the blank spaces upon the chartof universal life, against which are traced the re-semblances, which, as we follow them back Intoremote periods of geologic time, reveal to usdefinite lines of succession with structural change,and these, correctly Interpreted, are nothing lessthan actual lines of blood relationship. To knowwhat an animal is, therefore, we must know some-thing of its family tree. It is perhaps well to emphasize the need of cor-rect Interpretation, f
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