the whole coat has become faded and bleached by the action of the sun,
wind, snow, and rain, until the freshness of its late autumn colors has
totally disappeared. The bison takes on a seedy, weathered, and rusty
look. But this is not a circumstance to what happens to him a little
later. Promptly with the coming of the spring, if not even in the last
week of February, the buffalo begins the shedding of his winter coat. It
is a long and difficult task, and with commendable energy he sets about
it at the earliest possible moment. It lasts him more than half the
year, and is attended with many positive discomforts.

The process of shedding is accomplished in two ways: by the new hair
growing into and forcing off the old, and by the old hair falling off in
great patches, leaving the skin bare. On the heavily-haired
portions--the head, neck, fore quarters, and hump--the old hair stops
growing, dies, and the new hair immediately starts through the skin and
forces it off. The new hair grows so rapidly, and at the same time so
densely, that it forces itself into the old, becomes hopelessly
entangled with it, and in time actually lifts the old hair clear of the
skin. On the head the new hair is dark brown or black, but on the neck,
fore quarters, and hump it has at first, and indeed until it is 2 inches
in length, a peculiar gray or drab color, mixed with brown, totally
different from its final and natural color. The new hair starts first on
the head, but the actual shedding of the old hair is to be seen first
along the lower parts of the neck and between the fore legs. The
heavily-haired parts are never bare, but, on the contrary, the amount of
hair upon them is about the same all the year round. The old and the new
hair cling together with provoking tenacity long after the old coat
should fall, and on several of the bulls we killed in October there were
patches of it still sticking tightly to the shoulders, from which it
had to be forcibly plucked away. Under all such patches the new hair was