+---------------------------------------------------------+
| BISON AMERICANUS. (Male; four months old.) |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| (_No. 15503, National Museum collection._) |
+---------------------------------------------------------+
| |Feet.|Inches.|
|Height at shoulders | 2 | 8 |
|Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 3 | 101/2 |
|Depth of chest | 1 | 4 |
|Depth of flank | | 10 |
|Girth behind fore leg | 3 | 1/2 |
|From base of horns around end of nose | 1 | 71/2 |
|Length of tail vertebræ | | 7 |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

The calves begin to shed their coat of red hair about the beginning of
August. The first signs of the change, however, appear about a month
earlier than that, in the darkening of the mane under the throat, and
also on the top of the neck.[26]

[Note 26: Our captive had, in some way, bruised the skin on his
forehead, and in June all the hair came off the top of his head, leaving
it quite bald. We kept the skin well greased with porpoise oil, and by
the middle of July a fine coat of black hair had grown out all over the
surface that had previously been bare.]

By the 1st of August the red hair on the body begins to fall off in
small patches, and the growth of fine, new, dark hair seems to actually
crowd off the old. As is the case with the adult animals, the shortest
hair is the first to be shed, but the change of coat takes place in