AMONG THE BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1900, 3 July 1890, Page 38

AMONG THE BOOKS.

AN UNPAID BUFFALO BILL.* The period covered by Mr William Tt Hornaday's highly interesting and excellen. monograph, "The Extermination of the American Bison," is something under 20 years, and the evil wrought by that 20 years' pauseless, greed-gotten, vanity-bred slaughter comes into startling prominence. "It would have been as easy to count, or to estimate the number of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes living at any given time during the history of the species previous to 1870," says Mr Hornaday. Then follows this remarkable contrast : — " May 1, 1889. The buffaloes still alive in a wild state are so very few, and have been so carefully • marked down ' by hunters, it is possible to to make a close estimate of the total number remaining." A very exhaustive examination of the subject, an examination backed by the Government executive, and barely possible to any other writer, has led him So estimate that "the whole number of individuals of Bison Americanus now living is 1091." In a general way the capacity for believing needs to be of a very roomy and elastic order to accommodate all hunting and sporting figures. To some readers this odd buffalo will doubtless be suggestive of the conscientious sportsman, who would not vary the truth for the sake of "just one pigeon." There is no such discounting of Mr Hornaday's statistics, all chance of error has been so carefully eliminated, all over-estimate so liberally allowed for, that the one odd buffalo all the more confirms the general accuracy of the calculation. That it is not mere hyperbole to say it would have been as easy to count the leaves of the forest as to calculate the number of buffalo the following will prove : — "Perhaps the most vivid picture ever afforded of the former abundance of buffalo is that given by Colonel R. I. Dodge in his 'Plains of the Great West.' .... In May] 1871 I drove in a light waggon from Old " Fort Zara to Fort Lamed, on the Arkansas, 34 miles ; at least 25 miles of i this distance was through one immense herd .... the whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo. . . . At my request Colonel Dodge has kindly furnished me with a careful estimate upon which to base a calculation of the number of buffalo in that great herd, and the result is very interesting. In a private letter dated September 21, 1887, he writes as follows : — 'The great herd of the Arkansas through which I passed could not have averaged, at rest, over 15 or 20 individuals to the acre, but was, from my own observation, not less than 25 miles wide, and from reports of hunters and others it was about five days in passing a giyen point, or not less than 60 miles deep. From the top of Pawnee Eock I could see from six to ten miles in almost every direction. This whole vast space was covered with buffalo, looking at a distance like one compact mass. ... I have seen such a sight a great number of times, but never on so large a scale That was the last of 'the great herds.'" Calculating from a carefully based equation, Mr Hornaday estimates the number of thia herd at 4,000,000. "No wonder," he remarks, " that the men of the West of those days, both white and red, thought it would be impossible to exterminate such a mighty multitude. . . . And yet in four short years the southern herd wa3 almost totally annihilated." About the year 1880 the destruction of the Northern herd commenced, and by the end of 1883 it had practically ceased to exist — that is, buffalo slaughter had ceased to pay the butchers. So ruthless and wanton was the destruction that not a single individual engaged in tbi3 monstrous carnage pretended " sport " for a moment. " The man with the gun " was everywhere, and soon completed the most sanguinary warfare ever waged against brute creation. That so vast, and probably so unparalleled, a disturbance of the rough balance of Nature's laws would ultimate in such direful consequences as we know to have followed this slaughter, never entered into the thoughts of either white man or red. Some excuse may be found for the red man ; he believed that " the buffalo issued from the earth continually, and that the supply was necessarily inexhaustible," that excuse does not avail the white mar> — dollars and the love of the wild license of the plains actuated him. For want of the buffalo, the red man in the north hungers, starves, and perishes, nor is the pale-face much better off. From hunter to knacker, from knacker to bone gatherer, he presents a new reading of the prodigal son, and if not fain to eat the husks flung to the swine, he certainly scours plain and prairie searching for the bleached bones of the beaets he so riotously exterminated—a fitting punishment for his profligate butchery. This may be considered as belonging to the immediate consequences of effacing the buffalo ; there are others, and of larger dimensions. The buffalo has been so prominent a factor in the geographical distribution of the Indian tribes, that its destruction cannot be a matter of future unconcern to the American nation. Into the life history of the buffalo Mr Hornaday enters minutely and fully, but hero we need not follow him. Buffalo hunting is a thing of the past, and, thanks to the "Wild West Show," it will not even serve as a future background for thrilling adventures with lasso and rifle, or bareback dare-devilry on a mustang. Like his co-savage the Eed Indian the buffalo is stepping within the pale of civilisation, becoming domesticated, and in taking on this slavish quality parts with the lasb scrap of the romance of the prairie. It is to buffalo economics that we must turn for anything new or instructive. Here a very wide field of interest opens up. Systematic crossing with the domestic cow is an established success, and promises very great results to the ranchowner. This section of Mr Hornaday's work embodies the result of many years of experiments in this direction by that energetic nnd shrewd breeder of range cattle Mr C. J. Jones, " Buffalo Jones," of Garden City, Kansas. There seems to be every reason for believing that by crossing range cattle with carefully selected buffalo blood (avoiding the interbred buffalo), a brood sufficiently hardy to stand the terrific storms,

snows, and blizzards of the territory will result. The vastly important part the bison will play in this new departure in breeding economy can be fully estimated by the ranchowner; from this cross will come the very animal he wants, in a little more bone, a little more fur and hair, and a shorter leg, ho sees endurance, stamina, and foraging instinct — fortune, in short. •• Under present conditions," says Mr Hornaday, " the stockmau simply stakes ;his cattle against the winter elements, and takes his chances, on the results which are governed by circumstances wholly beyond his control. . . A buffab can .weather storms and outlive hunger and cold which would kill any domestic steer that ever lived. . . . The very form of the buffalo, short thick legs, end head hung very near the ground, suggests most forcibly a special fitness to wrestle with mother earth for a living, snow or no snow. A buffalo will flounder through deep snowdrifts without a morsel of food, and survive where the best range steer would literally freeze on foot, bolt upright, as hundreds did in the winter of 1886-7. While range cattle turn tail to a blizzard and drift helplessly, the buffalo faces it every time, and remains master of the situation." In crossbreeding, the prepotency of the sire is so very pronounced that these desirable characteristics are the very ones transmitted. For many years it was gravely and scientifically contended that such cross breeding with the domestic cow must fail of success, owing to the hump formation of the buffalo; the hump on the calf would prove fatal in calving. Actual experiments often explode theories, notably so in this instance ; the hump does not appear until several months after birth. Experiments, extending over many years, unvaryingly show—" (1) The male bison crosses readily with the opposite sex of domestic cattle, but a buffab cow has never been known to produce a halfbred calf. The domestic cow prod uces a half bred calf successfully," and what is probably one of the most remarkable and most valuable practical issues of the experiments, " the progeny of the two species is for tile to any extent." As meat carriers the frames of these crossbreeds are peculiarly fitted to the conditions of a roaming existence, and the quality of the meat, where the crossing has been effected with shorthorn cows of good pedigree, sufficiently excellent to challenge comparison with our best. As a matter of fact, despite certain statements and opinions to the contrary, there is no finer meat than buffalo sirloin — hump meat is beyond comparison. Eeaders curious in buffalo statistics will find abundance of material in Mr Hornaday's delightful and graphic pages. They may learn the number of buffaloes slaughtered year by year, the amount of meat wantonly wasted, the number of "robes" sent to the various markets, and the cash transactions concerning them, and also learn, with more certainty than gratification, why a buffalo " robe," purchasable within recent years for sdol, cannot now be obtained under 20dol, 30dol, or perhaps 50dol. In brief, he tells all that is worth knowing concerning the buffalo financially, politically, zoologically, domestically, and venatically, from horns to tail and inside and out. We need hardly mention thafc Mr Hornaday is the superintendent of the National Zoological Park, a thorough naturalist and hunter, and one of the most accomplished taxidermists of the day. The group of American bisons in the National Museum was set up by him ; all who have examined the work pronounce it the most lifelike presentment of the animal hitherto seen. The work is very admirably illustrated, and a carefully constructed buffalo chart enables us to fix with chronological exactitude the periods of his local and final extinction, — Land and Water. — " You've been riding a bicycle, I hear," said one clerk to another. — "Just for exercise, you know." — " It has reduced your weight, I think." — Yes, I have fallen off a great deal."