knees, with a gush of scarlet blood from his mouth and nostrils. * * *

"Upon examining the specimen, I found it to be an old bull, apparently
smaller and very much blacker than the ones I had seen killed on the
plains only a day or so before. Then I examined the first one I had
shot, as well as others which were killed by the packer from the same
bunch, and I came to the conclusion that they were typical
representatives of the variety known as the 'mountain buffalo,' a form
much more active in movement, of slighter limbs, blacker, and far more
dangerous to attack. My opinion in the premises remains unaltered
to-day. In all this I may be mistaken, but it was also the opinion held
by the old buffalo hunter who accompanied me, and who at once remarked
when he saw them that they were 'mountain buffalo,' and not the plains
variety. * * *

"These specimens were not actually measured by me in either case, and
their being considered smaller only rested upon my judging them by my
eye. But they were of a softer pelage, black, lighter in limb, and when
discovered were in the timber, on the side of the Big Horn Mountains."

The band of bison in the Yellowstone Park must, of necessity, be of the
so-called "wood" or "mountain" variety, and if by any chance one of its
members ever dies of old age, it is to be hoped its skin may be
carefully preserved and sent to the National Museum to throw some
further light on this question.

11. _The shedding of the winter pelage._--In personal appearance the
buffalo is subject to striking, and even painful, variations, and the
estimate an observer forms of him is very apt to depend upon the time of
the year at which the observation is made. Toward the end of the winter