In North- West Canada. 49 



The dog, which had followed, came limping towards us. I 

 asked what was the matter, and was informed that he had got 

 a cactus in his foot. On my enquiring if cacti plants grew 

 around here, I was informed that they grew abundantly on 

 these hills, and ^there were three or four species. ' We found 

 the dog had got some spines in the soles of his feet, which 

 were easily extracted. Soon afterwards'Macdonald pointed out 

 to me patches of cacti. I saw two species which are great fav- 

 orites in the windows of houses in Toronto. One has a large 

 crimson flower and grows about a foot high ; another species 

 has a large yellow flower. They grow in various shapes and 

 all are covered with prickly spines. Macdonald took me 

 to a pond among the hills and showed me a nest and eight 

 eggs of the pintail duck. The nest was in a bank side close 

 to the water, and was a hollow in the ground lined with 

 down. The eggs are pale grayish green, and average 2.20x 

 1.50. A kildeer plover came flying towards us, and before 

 long we had a number of them flying above our heads. Mac- 

 donald shot one, and although there must have been a num- 

 ber of nests around, we did not find a single one, although 

 we searched carefully. The kildeer is a very wary bird, and 

 I never yet flushed one off its nest. Buffalo wallows are nu- 

 merous among these hills. They are large circular hollows in 

 the ground, from six to nine feet in diameter, and about a foot 

 deep. They are overgrown with short green grass. They 

 were made by the buffaloes in the following manner: The an- 

 imals, on reaching some damp spot among the hills, would lay 

 down and begin working their bodies round, scraping the 

 ground with their feet. They soon work a large circular hol- 

 low into which the water oozes, here they bathed themselves, 

 and coated their bodies with mud, and a buffalo in this state cer- 

 tainly would appear an ugly, shaggy monster. After one buf- 

 falo had satisfied himself in wallowing, another would take 

 his place, and in this way these wallows are found all over 

 the prairies. There are generally numbers of these wallows 

 together, showing that a herd of buffalo once frequented these 

 places. The prairies are also bisected all over with their trails. 

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