We are able to corroborate this statement. In August, 1869, while crossing the Kansas plains in a stagecoach we had the privilege, as we regard it now, of seeing one of the largest herds of buffalo then remaining. When first seen, at a distance of from three to five miles, we could distinctly hear the roaring of the animals, who had been stampeded, perhaps by hunters, who were at that time wantonly destroying the grand creatures for their robes. That so many of these animals could have been killed in mere wantonness, says Prof. Holder, seems incredible when their vast numbers are realized. We first hear of the bison from Cortez and his followers in 1521. Montezuma had one in a zoölogical garden, the specimen, in all probability, having been caught in Coahuila. In 1530 Cabeza saw them in Texas, and in 1542 Coronado found a herd in what is now the Indian Territory, one of his officers describing them as horrible beasts that demoralized the horses. In 1612 Sir Samuel Argall observed herds of bison near the national capital, and, it is said, two hundred and eighty-seven years ago herds of bison grazed on the site of the capitol building at Washington. In 1678 Father Hennepin observed them in what is now northern Illinois, and in October, 1729, Col. W. Bird saw herds in North Carolina and Virginia. It is known, in fact, that the bison formerly ranged in millions from the Atlantic seaboard to the Gulf of Mexico, from Texas to the Great Slave Lake, and as far west as central Nevada. "As to their numbers, they were like the sands of the seashore, and the accounts given by those who hunted them twenty or thirty years ago to-day seem like vagaries of a disordered imagination." Colonel Dodge, in his memoirs, states that on one occasion he rode twenty-five miles in Arkansas, always being in a herd of buffaloes, or many small herds, with but a small separating strip between them. The animals paid but little attention to him, merely moving slowly out of the way or advancing, bringing the whole herd of thousands down on him with the roar of an avalanche. This he met by standing fast and firing when they came within short range, the shot causing them to divide. This he did as a protection, otherwise they would have run him down and crushed man, horses, and wagon. This herd was later found to be fifty miles wide and to occupy five days in passing a given point on its way north. It was estimated that the herd comprised half a million buffaloes. A train on the Kansas Pacific road in that state in 1868 passed between the towns of Ellsworth and Sheridan--one hundred and twenty miles--through a continuous herd of buffaloes. They were packed so that the earth was black, and more than once the train was stopped, the surging mass becoming a menace to human safety. This is the same herd first seen by us in August, 1869, and again in 1871 and 1872. An army officer relates that he was at that time on duty in the pay department, which