420 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



"To these sinks, the waters lying on the surface of the prairies are 

 continually draining and in them lodging their vegetable deposits, which 

 after a lapse of years fill them up to the surface with a rich soil, which 

 throws up an unusual growth of grass and herbage, forming conspicu- 

 ous circles, which arrest the eye of the traveler and are calculated to 

 excite his surprise for ages to come." 



During the latter part of the last century, when the bison inhabited 

 Kentucky and Pennsylvania, the salt springs of those States were re- 

 sorted to by thousands of those animals, who drank of the saline waters 

 and licked the impregnated earth. Mr. Thomas Ashe* affords us a 

 most interesting account, from the testimony of an eye- witness, of the 

 behavior of a bison at a salt spring. The description refers to a locality 

 in western Pennsylvania, where " an old mau, one of the first settlers 

 of this country, built his log house on the immediate borders of a salt 

 spring. He informed me that for the first several seasons the buffaloes 

 paid him their visits with the utmost regularity ; they traveled in sin- 

 gle files, always following each other at equal distances, forming droves, 

 on their arrival, of about 300 each. 



"The first and second years, so unacquainted were these poor brutes 

 with the use of this man's house or with his nature, that in a few hours 

 they rubbed the house completely down, taking delight in turning the 

 logs off with their horns, while he had some difficulty to escape from 

 being trampled under their feet or crushed to death in his own ruins. At 

 that period he supposed there could not have been less than 2,000 in 

 the neighborhood of the spring. They sought for no manner of food, 

 but only bathed and drank three or four times a day and rolled in the 

 earth, or reposed with their flanks distended in the adjacent shades; 

 and on the fifth and sixth days separated into distinct droves, bathed, 

 drank, and departed in single files, according to the exact order of their 

 arrival. They all rolled successively in the same hole, and each thus 

 carried away a coat of mud to preserve the moisture on their skin and 

 which, when hardened and baked in the sun, would resist the stings of 

 millions of insects that otherwise would persecute these peaceful trav- 

 elers to madness or even death." 



It was a fixed habit with the great buffalo herds to move southward 

 from 200 to 400 miles at the approach of winter. Sometimes this move- 

 ment was accomplished quietly and without any excitement, but at 

 other times it was done with a rush, in which considerable distances 

 would be gone over on the double-quick. The advance of a herd was 

 often very much like that of a big army, in a straggling line, from four 

 to ten animals abreast. Sometimes the herd moved forward in a dense 

 mass, and in consequence often came to grief in quicksands, alkali bogs T 

 muddy crossings, and on treacherous ice. In such places thousands 

 of buffaloes lost their lives, through those in the lead being forced into 

 danger by pressure of the mass coming behind. In this manner, in the 



* Travels in America in 1806. London, 1808* 



