too On Muriate of Soda. 



bison?, which arc discovered under ground thereabout. The 

 resort was so numerous, that for a space of nearly two miles 

 across there was not a single herb or plant to be seen. Like 

 other yards or places much frequented by cattle, every green 

 thing, even the forest trees, had been destroved. Beyond 

 this spacious area the roots of many trees had been laid 

 bare and bruised by the stampings of their feet, as happen* 

 at the posts and sheds where horses arc tied and tormented 

 by flies. So long continued and incessant had been the 

 treadinsf, scraping, and stampmg, that many of these 

 trees, undermined at their roots, had been blown down ; 

 and for several miles around this great place of rendezvous, 

 all the herbage and shrubbery had been cropped off and 

 eaten away. 



The bones of the unknown, and probably extinct, speciefi 

 of elephant, called the mammoth, have been found plen- 

 tifully at the licks. The death of so many of those huge 

 creatures in the neighbourhood of the Salines is a subject 

 of various conjecture ; — they might have travelled to those 

 spots for the purpose of salting themselves, like other herbi- 

 vorous animals ; and when there, they might have been de- 

 stroyed by means similar to those which proved fatal to the 

 smaller beasts ; such as drinking excessively of the salt 

 water, dirt-eating, destruction by their natural enemies, or 

 getting bemired and cast in the mud-holes and sloughs. It is 

 probably owing to a conjunciion of all these causes that 

 this extraordinary race of quadrupeds has disappeared from 

 the land of the living. The occurrence of so many elephan- 

 tine bones near Newburgh in New-York, at the bottom of 

 marle-pits, gives countenance to the supposition that the 

 mammoths expired in the mire of the places to which they 

 went for drink. 



But the muriate of soda is sought and devoured with 

 equal eaijcerness by tame animals as by wild ones. Neat 

 cattle, sheep, and horses, are remarkably fond of it ; and 

 it is even relished, though in an inferior degree, by swine. 

 Those creatures, however, it must be remembered, when 

 they live near the sca-coasls and in insular situations, im- 

 meroed in a saline maritime atmosphere, do not acquire a. 

 very keen relish for salt. It seems, as was before hinted, 

 that their bodies inhaled it from the air, which is known 

 frequently to contain so much of it as to bedew the leaves 

 of trees, and the blades of grass, with a briny sprinkling. 

 They may thus tak'e it in with their food as thev graze on the 

 uplands, and more particularly when they are fed with salt 

 fodder, 



la 



