Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/800

 weight of its carcass exceeds that of a buffalo's, while the meat is better. Such a carcass has been known to weigh as much as 1,100 pounds net. Its robe is much more valuable than the buffalo's; for its fur, instead of being chiefly bunched at the



mane, is evenly distributed over the hide, and is much finer in quality—its present value being from $50 to $75. A buffalo crossed with a half-bred cow produces an animal quite as hardy as its sire, but not quite so large. Experiments of much interest are in progress with various strains of domestic cattle, the outcome promising to be perhaps only less important than the original domestication, and subsequent molding, of horses and cattle from their primitive wild forms.

Chief among the ranches where the domestication of the buffalo is taking place and its crosses are being bred is that of Mr. C. J. Jones, at Garden City, Kan. The nucleus of his herd, seven calves and fifteen adult buffaloes, were run down by him on the Texan plains, two to three hundred miles from Garden City. He has crossed Texan cows with buffalo bulls, and obtained excellent results. In November last he acquired a herd of eighty-three animals from Mr. Samuel L. Bedson, of Stony Mountain, sixteen miles from Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba. The crosses in this herd were from Galloway or polled Angus cattle; they are much superior to those from Texan strains, and are presented in the accompanying illustrations. Mr. Bedson's herd dated from 1877, when he first corraled a buffalo bull and four heifers. These five animals were part of the small remnant grazing in the vast region between the Saskatchewan River and the international boundary, the region now traversed by the Canadian Pacific Railway. In that immense plain the slaughter of buffaloes, due to the traffic of the Hudson's Bay Company, had been for two