CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 9. RTJMINANTIA. 487 
THE TAME BUFFALO. 
may be seen watcliing tlie efforts of tlieir offspring with intense anxiety, but unable to render 
them any assistance, and only uttering troubled moans ; often, the calves get on the backs of 
their mothers, and are thus carried over the streams in safety. Sometimes in crossing the ice a 
herd is ingulfed, and many of them perish. 
In the spring the bison bulls select their mates and do not leave them till these retire for their 
parturition. The battles among the males for a particular female are often terrible. On these 
occasions the contest is preluded by bellow ings and tearing up of the earth after the manner of 
civilized bulls. When the combatants rush to the encounter, striking their heads together, the 
shock is altogether terrific. As a large herd moves along they keep up a perpetual bellowing, 
and it is said they may be heard ten miles on a fine day. In their migrations the multitude 
move irregularly forward in a slow walk ; but when necessity requires these animals can gallop 
nearly as fast as a horse can run. Some of the fat, old bulls, however, like pursy old gentlemen, 
are incapable of such flights. The cows and calves are much the fleetest. In lying down and 
rising the action of the bison is nearly the same as that of our domestic cattle. 
The Bison presents many inducements to the hunter for its capture : the horns are used for 
many purposes, the hide is valuable as a covering, the flesh is excellent — some parts, indeed, as the 
tongue and the hump, delicious. It is not surprising, therefore, that various methods are resorted 
to by the Indians — several tribes of which live almost entirely on their flesh — in hunting these 
animals. Sometimes the dry prairie-grass is set on fire in a circle, and maddened by fright, the 
poor animals rush into openings, where the deadly rifle awaits them Sometimes they are driven 
over ledges of rocks, and either killed or fatally wounded in the plunge ; sometimes they are en- 
ticed into a large inclosure made of stakes and branches of trees, where they are easily dispatched ; 
sometimes the hunter approaches the herd on horseback, and selecting a particular animal, lays 
him prostrate by a bullet or an arrow, which is sent with such force as to pass quite through 
the body. Nor are the Indians the only slayers of these beasts : white hunters — some who make 
it a trade, some who are only seeking sport — and not a few are attracted hither, as well from dif- 
ferent portions of the United States as from various parts of Europe — are constantly plying the 
deadly rifle against these herds. At the same time, numerous bands of wolves are mingled with 
the flock, attacking and pulhng down the young, the sick, the lame, the wounded, the lonely, and 
the defenseless. CatHn, with terrible fidelity, has painted some of these hunting scenes — not 
only the attacks of the Indians upon the herd, but those of the prairie-wolves, encircling, for in- 
stance, some wounded bull, who, although his eyes are torn from their sockets, his tongue eaten 
off", and his bowels gushing out and being ravenously devoured by his hideous assailants, still 
stands and — bHnd, bleeding, and staggering — bravely faces and threatens his enemy. The grizzly 
bear is also a terrible destroyer, and the strongest oif the train falls helpless beneath the shock of; 
