given. Mr. King was mounted on a somewhat unmanageable horse. On one
occasion in following a band he wounded a large bull, and became so
wedged in by the maddened animals that he was unable to avoid the charge
of the bull, which was at its last gasp. Coming straight toward him it
leaped into the air and struck the afterpart of the saddle full with its
massive forehead. The horse was hurled to the ground with a broken back,
and King's leg was likewise broken, while the bull turned a complete
somerset over them and never rose again.

In the recesses of the Rocky Mountains, from Colorado northward
through Alberta, and in the depths of the subarctic forest beyond the
Saskatchewan, there have always been found small numbers of the bison,
locally called the mountain buffalo and wood buffalo; often indeed the
old hunters term these animals "bison," although they never speak of the
plains animals save as buffalo. They form a slight variety of what was
formerly the ordinary plains bison, intergrading with it; on the whole
they are darker in color, with longer, thicker hair, and in consequence
with the appearance of being heavier-bodied and shorter-legged. They
have been sometimes spoken of as forming a separate species; but,
judging from my own limited experience, and from a comparison of the
many hides I have seen, I think they are really the same animal,
many individuals of the two so-called varieties being quite
indistinguishable. In fact, the only moderate-sized herd of wild bison
in existence to-day, the protected herd in the Yellowstone Park, is
composed of animals intermediate in habits and coat between the mountain
and plains varieties--as were all the herds of the Bighorn, Big Hole,
Upper Madison, and Upper Yellowstone valleys.

However, the habitat of these wood and mountain bison yielded them
shelter from hunters in a way that the plains never could, and hence