they have always been harder to kill in the one place than in the other;
for precisely the same reasons that have held good with the elk, which
have been completely exterminated from the plains, while still abundant
in many of the forest fastnesses of the Rockies. Moreover, the bison's
dull eyesight is no special harm in the woods, while it is peculiarly
hurtful to the safety of any beast on the plains, where eyesight
avails more than any other sense, the true game of the plains being the
prong-buck, the most keen-sighted of American animals. On the other
hand the bison's hearing, of little avail on the plains, is of much
assistance in the woods; and its excellent nose helps equally in both
places.

Though it was always more difficult to kill the bison of the forests and
the mountains than the bison of the prairie, yet now that the species
is, in its wild state, hovering on the brink of extinction, the
difficulty is immeasurably increased. A merciless and terrible process
of natural selection, in which the agents were rifle-bearing hunters,
has left as the last survivors in a hopeless struggle for existence only
the wariest of the bison and those gifted with the sharpest senses. That
this was true of the last lingering individuals that survived the great
slaughter on the plains is well shown by Mr. Hornaday in his graphic
account of his campaign against the few scattered buffalo which still
lived in 1886 between the Missouri and the Yellowstone, along the Big
Dry. The bison of the plains and the prairies have now vanished; and
so few of their brethren of the mountains and the northern forests are
left, that they can just barely be reckoned among American game; but
whoever is so fortunate as to find any of these animals must work his
hardest, and show all his skill as a hunter if he wishes to get one.

In the fall of 1889 I heard that a very few bison were still left around