256 BUFFALO WALLOWS. 



But this is not all, for as we have before observed, 

 among the tombs of ancient Egypt, explorers entering 

 sepulchral chambers as yet inviolate, have found still in 

 existence, clearly marked upon the sandy floors, the 

 actual footprints of the bearers who thousands of years 

 before had carried in the mummies to their last resting- 

 places; some of these footprints have been discovered, 

 as clearly marked as if they had only been made the 

 previous day. * 



Such instances constitute examples of the preserva- 

 tion of apparently unstable impressions, through non- 

 disturbance. 



Then, coming to the case of marks seaming the 

 natural surface of the earth, fully exposed to the 

 action of the elements, which form another variety of 

 ancient tracks whose traces have been rendered more 

 or less permanent, we are again embarked in a long 

 and technical array of curious and remarkable investi- 

 gations, which strictly speaking are all items of 

 tracksman's lore. Thus the now almost extinct buffalo 

 or bison (Bos Americanus) has left practically indelible 

 traces of his existence in the innumerable " Buffalo 

 wallows " with which he has marked nearly the whole 

 of the great prairie region of the Far West, f So 

 also the beaver (Castor Canadensis) while banking up 

 the streams in the formation of his dams, has in a 

 great number of cases profoundly altered the aspect 

 of quite considerable areas of land the dams created 



* See Nile Gleanings, by Villiers Stuart of Dromana, M.P., 1880, p. 31. 



f These wallows consist of shallow basins worn in the soil after 

 rains, by the buffalo working themselves round on the ground, in order 

 perhaps to rid themselves of tufts of their ragged winter coats, or of 

 insect parasites. They are six or eight feet in diameter and perhaps one to 

 three feet deep. The deep examples are the work of several animals 

 using the same wallow, one after the other. 



