778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wallows are due to the instinct whereby the huge brute, with a 

 quickness which would not be expected of it, can roll itself in 

 loam until it has donned a garment impervious to flies, and which 

 in falling away carries off loose hair. When only dry, dusty soil 

 is available, the buffalo will roll in that, greatly to the prejudice 

 of its insect parasites. Wallows thus formed, numerous enough 

 to testify to the comparatively recent existence of vast herds, can 

 be most easily seen about the time of sunrise or sunset, when the 

 almost horizontal solar beams throw them into shadow. In years 

 gone by it was not uncommon to find in the hot springs of the 

 Yellowstone Park, and of Banff, in the Canadian National Park, 

 the remains of a buffalo strayed from a herd to find death in a 

 scalding basin. The reckless extirpation of the buffalo has been 

 fraught with very serious consequences to Indian tribes north 

 and south of the international boundary. One of their hardships, 

 which has been the frequent source of complaint and rebellion, 

 has been the deprivation of buffalo-meat which in large areas was 

 the Indian's principal food. Scarcely less serious has been the 

 like deprivation entailed upon pioneer settlers, whose sites have 

 in many cases been indicated to them by the buffalo-trails. In 

 their migrations between north and south, and in their search for 

 herbage least covered with snow, the buffalo has ever marked out 

 the best and most feasible path. 



While, as in other departments of her great natural wealth, 

 America has been prodigal and spendthrift, there have been sev- 

 eral noteworthy attempts not only to stay the threatened exter- 

 mination of the buffalo, but to multiply its numbers and improve 

 the race by crossing it with domestic cattle. It is curious how 

 far back experiments in this direction date. Peter Kalm, in his 

 " Travels in North America," says that buffaloes were domesti- 

 cated in Quebec in 1750, and that in Carolina they had been 

 crossed with domestic cattle. So docile indeed was a buffalo bull 

 mentioned in Schoolcraft's " History of the Indians of the United 

 States," that he had been yoked to the plow. Robert Wickliffe, 

 of Lexington, Ky., in 1843, wrote Audubon and Bachman that he 

 had secured quarter, half, and three-quarter crosses between the 

 buffalo and domestic cattle. The progeny were tame, worked in 

 yoke, exceeded the ox in strength, and retained the wallowing 

 habit. All the half-bred heifers were fertile, but the half-bred 

 bulls were not. Colonel George C. Thompson, of Shawnee Springs, 

 Ky., concurrently with Mr. Wickliffe's experiment, domesticated 

 a buffalo bull and three buffalo cows ; they were thoroughly 

 docile, hardy, and long-lived. Mr. I. W. Cunningham, of Howard 

 County, Neb., in 1878, recorded that both domestication and cross- 

 ing had been successful in the county mentioned — just as in Mr. 

 Wickliffe's case. However, with the horse as a competitor as a 



