280 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
SOME NATURAL-HISTORY NOTES OF 1859. 
BY J. R. MEAD, WICHITA. 
Read December 30, 1898. 
Lobo, the mountain wolf, locally known on the plains as ‘‘ big gray,’’ were 
congeners and associates of the buffalo, and lived almost exclusively upon them. 
Each wolf would kill in the course of a year, it is fair to assume, a dozen buffalo, 
many of them calves; but they, with equal facility, could kill the strongest bull, 
and did, whenever appetite and circumstances made it most convenient. 
Prior to our time Indians did not kill wolves; none died but from old age. I 
have killed numbers whose teeth were entirely gone, except a few black stumps. 
Such could not kill game for themselves, but ate that killed by others. Each 
female brought forth and reared from tbree to eight young; a buffalo but one. 
By all the known rules of mathematics the wolves should in course of centuries 
increase until in one season they would devour every one of the six million buf- 
falo who once roamed the plains. 
Will some naturalist please solve the mystery — why they did not? 
Hunters with strychnia finally exterminated the wolves, myself and men kill- 
‘ing some 5000 of them. They never molested people. 
There were red foxes living on the plains with the wolves, called ‘‘swifts”’ from 
their remarkable speed. They lived in pairs; not more than two found together. 
No other foxes were found on the plains. They were unlike the timber foxes. 
Black wolves were found in the eastern part of the Indian territory, but not 
on the plains. 
Coyotes were not the same as the prairie-wolf found east of the Missouri river. 
A few black bear were found in Comanche county, nesting in the gypsum 
caves. 
Black and gray lynx were occasionally met with, and several varieties of wild- 
cats—some with tails half as long as domestic cats, some with no more tail than 
a rabbit, some with long legs and short bodies, others with very long bodies and 
very short legs. Prairie-dogs, rabbits, and turkeys were their favorite and com- 
mon food. 
Hedgehogs, locally called porcupines, were very common on the streams 
between the Saline and Solomon. Tney subsisted on the bark and buds of 
trees, climbing trees with ease. As they could not run, their method of de- 
fense was striking a horizontal blow with their tails with sufficient force to drive 
their quills into the stock of a rifle. They nested under shelving rocks where 
such could be found, and brought forth two at a litter. 
Fox-squirrels abounded along the Solomon, Saline, and their tributaries; no 
other tree squirrels were noticed. 
Marten were rare. . 
No mink were on the plains before the settlement of the country, but became 
very plentiful shortly after. Now they are rare. 
Badgers were only occasionally met with. 
I remember of killing but one woodchuck, on Spillman’s creek, a branch of 
the Saline. 
The large two-striped skunks flourished everywhere; there were none of the 
small spotted variety. 
Beaver were very numerous, cutting down cottonwood trees three feet in 
diameter, but preferring young trees and brush. 
Otter were common. 
