By a strange fatality, our spike bull appears to be the only one in any museum, or even in preserved existence, as far as can be ascertained. Out of the twenty-five buffaloes killed and preserved by the Smithsonian expedition, ten of which were adult bulls, this specimen was the only male between the yearling and the adult ages. An effort to procure another entire specimen of this age from Texas yielded only two spike heads. It is to be sincerely regretted that more specimens representing this very interesting period of the buffalo's life have not been preserved, for it is now too late to procure wild specimens. The following are the post-mortem dimensions of our specimen: +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | BISON AMERICANUS. | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ |("Spike" bull, two years old; taken October 14, 1886. Montana.)| +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | (_No. 15685, National Museum collection._) | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Feet.| Inches. | |Height at shoulders | 4 | 2 | |Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 7 | 7 | |Depth of chest | 2 | 3 | |Depth of flank | 1 | 7 | |Girth behind fore leg | 6 | 8 | |From base of horns around end of nose | 2 | 81/2 | |Length of tail vertebræ | 1 | | +---------------------------------------------------------------+ 7. _The Adult Bull._--In attempting to describe the adult male in the National Museum group, it is difficult to decide which feature is most prominent, the massive, magnificent head, with its shaggy frontlet and luxuriant black beard, or the lofty hump, with its showy covering of straw-yellow hair, in thickly-growing locks 4 inches long. But the head is irresistible in its claims to precedence. [Illustration: SPIKE BULL. From the group in the National Museum. Reproduced from the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_, by permission of the publishers.]