“A further fact worth remembering about the Plains animals is that most of those peculiar to the Plains have been popularly misnamed. The buffalo is the bison, the prairie dog is a marmot, the rabbit is a true hare. This is suggestive of what happened when a people having their background in a humid, forested region came out into a new environment. The point is not important except as a symptom of the Easterner’s misunderstanding of the West.”
