"The wood buffalo is stated to be very scarce, and only found north of
the Saskatchewan and on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains. It never
ventures into the open plains. The prairie buffalo, on the contrary,
generally avoids the woods in summer and keeps to the open country; but
in winter they are frequently found in the woods of the Little Souris,
Saskatchewan, the Touchwood Hills, and the aspen groves on the
Qu'Appelle. There is no doubt that formerly the prairie buffalo ranged
through open woods almost as much as he now does through the prairies."

Mr. Harrison S. Young, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company,
stationed at Fort Edmonton, writes me as follows in a letter dated
October 22, 1887: "In our district of Athabasca, along the Salt River,
there are still a few wood buffalo killed every year; but they are fast
diminishing in numbers, and are also becoming very shy."

In Prof. John Macoun's "Manitoba and the Great Northwest," page 342,
there occurs the following reference to the wood buffalo: "In the winter
of 1870 the last buffalo were killed north of Peace River; but in 1875
about one thousand head were still in existence between the Athabasca
and Peace Rivers, north of Little Slave Lake. These are called wood
buffalo by the hunters, but diner only in size from those of the plain."

In the absence of facts based on personal observations, I may be
permitted to advance an opinion in regard to the wood buffalo. There is
some reason for the belief that certain changes of form may have taken
place in the buffaloes that have taken up a permanent residence in
rugged and precipitous mountain regions. Indeed, it is hardly possible
to understand how such a radical change in the habitat of an animal
could fail, through successive generations, to effect certain changes in
the animal itself. It seems to me that the changes which would take