it is probable that the survivors of each race are about equal in
number.

It is true that the number of our own species has lately been placed as
high as a thousand, but even if these figures are correct, the seeds of
decay from internal causes, such as inbreeding and the degeneration of
restraint, are already sown, and the inevitable end of the race is not
far off.

The Peace River, or woodland, bison has lately been separated as a
sub-species _(B. bison athabascae)_, distinguished from the
southern and better known form by superior size, a wider forehead,
longer, more slender and incurved horns, and by a thicker and softer
coat, which is also darker in color. Now, it is an interesting fact that
a fossil bison skull from the lower Pliocene of India resembles the
present European species, and in later geological times very similar
bisons closely allied to each other, if not identical, inhabited all
northern regions, including America. These were large animals with wide
skulls, and there is little doubt that from this circumpolar form came
both of the bisons now inhabiting Europe and America. Out of some half
dozen fossil bison which have been described from America, none earlier
than the latest Tertiary, _Bison latifrons_ from the Pleistocene
seems likely to have been the immediate ancestor of recent American
species, and as the one skull of the woodland bison which has been
examined resembles both _latifrons_ and the European species more
than the plains species does, it seems probable that these two more
nearly represent the primitive bison, of which the former inhabitant of
the prairies is a more modified descendant.

The process of elimination has at last led to this outline definition of