

I lie I'nur^lioni or .XuicnciUi .\iiU'l,>fu ,,,.. .. 



annitally. Found all over the praines. it is a left-over fi 



preglacial times 



wore into the hard surface soil in many cases laid out the 

 original roads followed by the white invaders as they straggled 

 westward. Bison needed water, and for this they would dig with 

 their front hoofs, making shallow, bowl-shaped and roughly 

 circular depressions, called appropriately "buffalo wallows." 

 (However, many of these depressions visible today, though 

 attributed to the activities of the buffalo, apparently were really 

 caused by wind action in natural depressions sometimes started 

 by prairie dogs.) The Bison faced a rather more rugged and 

 irksome existence than one might suppose, because the prairies 

 are for the greater part of the year rather "difficult" and at other 

 times can be really distressing. 



In winter they are very cold and wind-swept and have a lot 

 of snowfall through which every living thing has to dig for 

 whatever dried grasses may remain from the scorching summers 

 and autumns. The spring brings unusually low temperatures and 

 often widespread floods before the grass greens again. Early 

 summer means a brief respite, but then the atmosphere becomes 

 troublesome; for it is on the prairies of the world that one really 

 comes face to face with "weather" in many of its most violent 

 aspects. At the end of summer, drought is almost invariably the 

 rule. Then comes fire — under natural conditions started by light- 



ning — that roars unchecked over mile after mile, consuming 

 everything that has already been dried to tinder by the sun. 



But so swiftly did the winds drive these violent fires along 

 that their destructiveness was actually diminished, and animals 

 that could duck into holes were almost immune from them. The 

 fires just rolled over the thin ground cover and left it smoldering: 

 sometimes it simply did not have time to burn at all. Also, as 

 any prairie farmer knows, the wind can even be too strong, and 

 then it simply blows the fire out as we blow out a candle flame. 

 Nonetheless, fire was perhaps the worst enemy of the bigger 

 animals, for they often could not fly fast enough before it and 

 they could not withstand suffocation if it caught up with them. 

 Yet, although often singed, they were seldom, it seems, actually 

 burned to death. The jack rabbits and pronghorns could usually 

 get away from it, since both were exceedingly swift animals 

 with great staying powers. As a matter of fact, they did better 

 than many of the birds, which tended to fly a short distance 

 ahead of the flame front and then land and forget the problem 

 till the heat hit them again. But even the swiftest animals 

 seem not to have been able to get away from the torrential 

 floods resulting from the violent electric storms and cloudbursts 

 of late summer. Whole herds became overwhelmed and went 



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