ion Pacific railway, and the annual rate of destruction from 1870
to 1875 has been estimated at 2,500,000 head. In 1880 the completion of
the Northern Pacific railway led to an attack upon the northern herd.
The last of the Dakota bisons were destroyed by Indians in 1883, leaving
then less than 1000 wild individuals in the United State.

A count which was concluded at the end of February 1903, put the number
of captive bisons at 1119, of which 969 were in parks and zoological
gardens in the United States, 41 in Canada and 109 in Europe. At the
same time it was estimated that there were 34 wild bison in the United
States and 600 in Canada.

In England small herds are kept by the duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey,
Bedfordshire, and by Mr C.J. Leyland at Haggerston Castle,
Northumberland.

Two races of the American bison have been distinguished--the typical
prairie form, and the woodland race, _B. bison athabascae_; but the two
are very similar. (R. L.*)

BISQUE (a French word of unknown origin, formerly spelt in English
"bisk"), a term for odds given in the games of tennis, lawn tennis,
croquet and golf; in the two former a bisque is one point to be taken at
any time during a "set" at the choice of the receiver of the odds, while
in croquet and golf it is one extra stroke to be taken similarly during
a game. The name is given, in cookery, to a thick soup, made
particularly of crayfish or lobsters.

BISSELL, GEORGE EDWIN (1839- ), American sculptor, son of a quarryman
and marble-cutter, was born at New Preston, Connecticut, on the 16th of
February 1839. During the Civil War he served as a private in the 23rd
Connecticut volunteers in the Department of the Gulf (1862-1863), and on
being mustered out became acting assistant paymaster in the South
Atlantic squadron. At the close of the war he joined his father in
business. He studied the art of sculpture abroad in 1875-1876, and lived
much in Paris during the years 1883-1896, with occasional visits to
America. Among his more important works are the soldiers' and sailors'
monument, and a statue of Colonel Chatfield, at Waterbury, Connecticut;
and statues of General Gates at Saratoga, New York, of Chancellor John
Watts in Trinity churchyard, New York City; of Colonel Abraham de
Peyster in Bowling Green, New York City; of Abraham Lincoln at
Edinburgh; of Burns and "Highland Mary," in Ayr, Scotland; of Chancellor
James Kent, in the Congressional library, Wash