. An introduction to the study of mammals living and extinct. Mammals. BO VID^ 363 abundant over a large portion of Europe in the Pleistocene period —the fossil race described as B. priscus not being specifically dis- tinct ; but at the present day it exists only in the primeval forests of Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and the Caucasus, where it is artificially preserved. The American Bison formerly ranged over about one-third of the North American continent. Thus, to quote from Mr. Horna- day,i " starting almost at tide-water on the Atlantic coast, it ex- tended across the Alleghany mo
. An introduction to the study of mammals living and extinct. Mammals. BO VID^ 363 abundant over a large portion of Europe in the Pleistocene period —the fossil race described as B. priscus not being specifically dis- tinct ; but at the present day it exists only in the primeval forests of Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and the Caucasus, where it is artificially preserved. The American Bison formerly ranged over about one-third of the North American continent. Thus, to quote from Mr. Horna- day,i " starting almost at tide-water on the Atlantic coast, it ex- tended across the Alleghany mountain system to the prairies along the Mississippi, and southward to the delta of that great Fig. 148.—The American Bison (Bos amencanus). After Homaday. Although the great plain country of the West was the natural home of the species, where it flourished most abundantly, it also wandered south across Texas to the burning plains of North-Eastern Mexico, westward across the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, and northward across a vast treeless waste to the bleak and inhospitable shores of the Great Slave Lake ; In consequence of the settlement of the country by Europeans the area inhabited by the Bison was gradually contracted, till about 1840 one mighty herd occupied the centre of its former range. The completion of the Union Pacific Bail way in 1869 divided this great herd into a southern and a northern division, the former comprising a number of individuals estimated at nearly four millions, while the latter contained about a million and a half. Before 1880 the southern herd had, however, practically ceased to exist; while the same fate overtook the northern one in 1883. In 1889 some twenty stragglers in Texas represented the last of the southern herd; while there were a few others in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, ^ The Extirpation of the American Bison, Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that ma
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Keywords: ., bookauthorly, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectmammals
