Bison
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Bison. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Buffalo, a wild animal of the ox kind, closely related to the wild ox or bison of Europe, but not to the Old World buffalo. It formerly ranged over the greater part of North America . Herds were known certainly in New York and Virginia. They were once abundant in the prairies and openings from the Tennessee River to the Great Lakes , but the natural home of the buffalo may be said to have been the grassy plain extending from Texas to Great Slave Lake . They penetrated the passes and parks of the Rocky Mountains , but are not known to have grazed west of the Sierra Nevada range. The extension of settlements early drove the buffalo westward across the Mississippi. After the Civil War, the building of the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railways cut their range into fragments. Trains were not infrequently impeded in early days by immense droves, but the murderous fire of passengers and the still more destructive methods of innumerable hunting parties, many of them from Europe, that slaughtered for the pleasure of killing, or for the sake of pelts, cleared the central part of the range as early as 1875. The southern buffaloes were all killed off as early, it is said, as 1890. The northern group is still represented by small herds in the Canadian forests beyond the Saskatchewan. January 1, 1908, William T. Hornaday, the eminent naturalist, estimated the number of wild bison in the Rocky Mountains at 25, and the number in Canada at 300. About 130 are captive in Europe, and 1,116 in America, bringing the total number of pure bred bison up to 2,047. The more notable American herds are found in Corbin's Game Preserve, New Hampshire ; in Oklahoma; in the Yellowstone National Park; and on various private ranches. In 1908 Congress purchased twenty square miles of mountain and valley west of Missoula, Montana, and ordered it fenced for a perpetual bison reserve. Mr. Hornaday has charge of stocking the preserve. Buffaloes differ from cattle more in outward appearance than in reality. They have fourteen pairs of ribs instead of thirteen. Spines rise from the shoulder vertebrae, giving a place of attachment for the immense muscles of the neck, and imparting the hunched appearance of the fore quarters. The head is broad. It is armed with short, outwardly curved horns, and covered with a shaggy mop of hair almost concealing a pair of little eyes. The hair is crisp and woolly, easily woven into cloth or twisted into ropes. A well grown female weighs 1,200 pounds; the male not infrequently attains a weight of 2,000 pounds. Buffalo society was organized not unlike that of cattle. A unit consisted of a patriarchal old bull in the lead, followed by several cows and their young. Whether going to pasture or seeking water, each family traveled in single file. In the springtime, thousands of families marched in search of new pastures together, forming vast herds extending farther than the eye could reach. On the approach of winter these nomadic animals again turned southward, or retired into the sheltered valleys of the rivers and mountain ranges. When pursued on the plain, the buffalo ran with a lumbering gallop, holding its head so low that its front feet rose and fell past the side of the head. In its migrations the buffalo swam with ease and climbed with agility, but naturally followed the easiest lines of travel. Its sharp hoofs, passing and repassing in countless thousands for season after season, cut deep trails in the prairie turf and mountain passes of which portions may be seen to this day. Surveyors locating a road or railway across the then unknown mountain ranges found it expedient to follow the pathways of this native engineer. Coyotes and wolves followed these migrations to drag down calves, spent buffaloes, or some chance male wounded in a contest with his rivals, and buzzards kept a lookout for a share in the spoils. In fly time the buffalo was fond of a wallow in the mud, or of throwing sand and gravel over himself by pawing or tossing his horns. Settlers find buffalo bones in the swamps they now drain for meadows. Buffalo pits worn deep by ages of pawing and scraping may still be seen. The buffalo has played no small part in the life of the western Indian, taking the place of the Virginia deer of the Atlantic coast and forest region. Buffalo meat,--fresh, smoked, dried, or converted into pemmican,--furnished a staple and often the sole article of food. The Indian made his moccasins of buffalo hide and slept between buffalo robes. The Mandan crossed the Missouri in a buffalo-hide canoe like the coracle of the ancient Briton. During the Indian summer, an Indian band gave itself up to a buffalo hunt. Mounted on his well trained pony, which he guided with his knees, the warrior dashed into a herd, racing along by the side of a selected animal until he had brought it down with bow and arrow, then along the side of another, until the plain was strewn with carcasses for the drudging squaws to recover. Parkman's Oregon Trail, a book that every boy ought to read, gives an excellent account of the buffalo. Writing of the Dakota Indians in 1847 when buffaloes vet grazed in large herds in Iowa and Minnesota, he says, "The buffalo supplies them with the necessaries of life, with habitations, food, clothing, beds, and fuel; strings for their bows, glue, thread, cordage, trail-ropes for their horses, coverings for their saddles, vessels to hold water, boats to cross streams, and the means of purchasing what they most need from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away." See Aurochs ; Buffalo ; Cattalo 2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about race that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: BR 2026-07-22) 2026 Editor's Note: The entry writes of a diminished animal; the collapse was near-total. Perhaps thirty million bison were reduced to a few hundred wild animals by the 1880s, slaughtered commercially and deliberately, as a means of starving the Plains nations into submission. Protection saved the remnant, herds now number in the hundreds of thousands, and in 2016 the American bison was named the national mammal of the United States. (Ed: BR 2026-06-08)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the name given to two species of ruminating animals belonging to the ox family; (1) the aurochs; (2) an analogous species, now nearly extinct, but once in countless herds roaming over the N. W. plains of the United States. Bisons have proportionately a larger head than oxen, with a conical hump between the shoulders and a shaggy mane. Two species are known: 1. Bison americanus, or bonasus americanus, the American bison, popularly but erroneously called the buffalo. It has 15 ribs on each side, while the European bison has but 14, and the domestic ox 13. These animals once roamed in herds in the western parts of Canada and the United States. The only representa tives of the species at present day being a small herd gathered and protected by the United States Government in the Yellowstone National Park, a few individuals in the more remote Canadian regions, and still other small numbers of them grouped in zoölogical collections, such as that at Lincoln Park, Chicago; the Agricultural Fair Grounds, St. Louis; Zoölogical Garden, New York City, etc. 2. Bison priscus, sometimes called bonasus bison, the European bison. It is the bonassos or bonasos of Aristotle, the bison of Oppian, the bison jubatus, and the bonasus of Pliny, the bos bison of Linnæus, and the bison europæus and priscus of Owen. It is often called the aurochs, which is etymologically the same word as Cæsar's urus, but the two species are distinct. Cæsar's ox is best distinguished as the urox, leaving the word aurochs to be monopolized by the European bison. The urox was a genuine bos, the bos urus or primogenius, which Prof. Boyd Dawkins believes to have been a giant variety (and no more) of the ordinary bos taurus. The European bison was once a British animal, though now found only fossil.