of the subarctic forest beyond the
Saskatchewan, there have always been found small numbers of the bison,
locally called the mountain buffalo and wood buffalo; often indeed the
old hunters term these animals "bison," although they never speak of the
plains animals save as buffalo. They form a slight variety of what was
formerly the ordinary plains bison, intergrading with it; on the whole
they are darker in color, with longer, thicker hair, and in consequence
with the appearance of being heavier-bodied and shorter-legged. They
have been sometimes spoken of as forming a separate species; but,
judging from my own limited experience, and from a comparison of the
many hides I have seen, I think they are really the same animal,
many individuals of the two so-called varieties being quite
indistinguishable. In fact, the only moderate-sized herd of wild bison
in existence to-day, the protected herd in the Yellowstone Park, is
composed of animals intermediate in habits and coat between the mountain
and plains varieties--as were all the herds of the Bighorn, Big Hole,
Upper Madison, and Upper Yellowstone valleys.

However, the habitat of these wood and mountain bison yielded them
shelter from hunters in a way that the plains never could, and hence
they have always been harder to kill in the one place than in the other;
for precisely the same reasons that have held good with the elk, which
have been completely exterminated from the plains, while still abundant
in many of the forest fastnesses of the Rockies. Moreover, the bison's
dull eyesight is no special harm in the woods, while it is peculiarly
hurtful to the safety of any beast on the plains, where eyesight
avails more than any other sense, the true game of the plains being the
prong-buck, the most keen-sighted of American animals. On the other
hand the bison's hearing, of little avail on the plains, is of much
assistance in the woods; and its excellent nose helps equally in both
places.

Though it was always more difficult to kill the bison of the forests and
the mountains than the bison of the prairie, yet now that the species
is, in its wild state, hovering on the brink of extinction, the
difficulty is immeasurably increased. A merciless and terrible process
of natural selection, in which the agents were rifle-bearing hunters,
has left as the last survivors in a hopeless struggle for existence only
the wariest of the bison and those gifted with the sharpest senses. That