The east of the Mississippi is still occupied by dense forests; the west by prairies only, on which the buffalo (_Bos Americanus_) and the musk ox (_Bos moschatus_) pasture. These two species of animals, the largest of the new world, furnish the nomadic tribes of the Apaches-Llaneros and Apaches-Lipanos with the means of nourishment. The Assiniboins occasionally slay from seven to eight hundred bisons in the course of a few days in the artificial enclosures constructed for the purpose of driving together the wild herds, and known as _bison parks_.[AA] The American bison, called by the Mexicans _Cibolo_, is killed chiefly on account of the tongue, which is regarded as a special delicacy. This animal is not a mere variety of the aurochs of the old world; although, like other species of animals, as for instance the elk (_Cervus alces_) and the reindeer (_Cervus tarandus_), no less than the stunted inhabitants of the polar regions, it may be regarded as common to the northern portions of _all_ continents, and as affording a proof of their former long existing connection. The Mexicans apply to the European ox the Aztec term _quaquahue_, or horned animal, from _quaquahuitl_, a horn. The huge ox-horns which have been found in ancient Mexican buildings near Cuernavaca, south-west of the capital of Mexico, appear to me to belong to the bison. The Canadian bison can be used for agricultural labour, and will breed with the European cattle, although it is uncertain whether the hybrid thus engendered is capable of propagating its species. Albert Gallatin, who, before his appearance in Europe as a distinguished diplomatist, had acquired by personal observation a considerable amount of information regarding the uncultivated parts of the United States, assures us that the fruitfulness of the mixed breed of the American buffalo and European cattle is an undoubted fact: “the mixed breed,” he writes, “was quite common fifty years ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia, and the cows, the issue of that mixture, propagated like all others.” “I do not remember,” he further adds, “that full-grown buffaloes were tamed; but dogs would at that time occasionally bring in the young bison-calves, which were reared and bred with European cows. At Monongahela all the cattle for a long time were of this mixed breed. It was said, however, that the cows yielded but little milk.” The favourite food of the buffalo is the _Tripsacum dactyloides_ (known as buffalo-grass in North Carolina) and a hitherto undescribed species of clover allied to the _Trifolium repens_, and designated by Barton as _Trifolium bisonicum_.