NEW $10 SILVER CERTIFICATE.
It Has Been Christened the “Buffalo Bill” as it Bears on its Face the Figure of a Buffalo.
Washington, July 18.—The fourth in the series of new silver certificates, which will be known as the American series, will soon be issued from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where the plates are nearly finished. It will be a ten-dollar bill and has already been christened the “Buffalo Bill,” not after Col. Cody, but because its distinctive character will be the figure of a gigantic buffalo. On the note the buffalo is headed westward, his shaggy head well down for a charge, his tail in a pugnacious attitude and his matted mane sweeping the ground.
In this note, as in others of this series, it is intended to leave as much open work as possible with a handsome design, the silk threads in the paper forming one of the greatest safeguards against counterfeiting. In many of the older notes the threads were almost entirely obscured by scroll-work. The subjects for this series will be confined to American life, hence the “American series.” On the one-dollar bill is the eagle, on the two, George Washington, and on the five the handsome head of the Indian chief, Onepapa. It was suggested that a picture of the battleship Maine be used on the ten-dollar notes and the suggestion was at first adopted. Later it was rejected as not distinctively American and not to be distinguished from any other battleship. The department is still searching for suitable subjects for the twenty and fifty-dollar bills.