38 
BUFFALO. 
enable them to take advantage of any accident that might happen in their 
lavour. But should the fight have been caused by a female who is in a large 
herd of cows, the discomfited bull soon finds a substitute for his first passion 
It frequently happens, that a bull leads oil' a cow, and remains with her 
separated during the season from all others, either male or female. 
When the Buffalo bull is working himself up to a belligerent state, 
he paws the ground, bellows loudly, and goes through nearly all the 
actions we may see performed by the domesticated bull under similar 
circumstances, and finally rushes at his foe head foremost, nuth all his 
speed and strength. Notwithstanding the violent shock with which two 
bulls thus meet m mad career, these encounters have never been known 
to result fatally, probably owing to the strength of the spinous process 
commonly called the hump, the shortness of their horns, and the quan- 
tity of hair about all their fore-parts. 
When congregated together in fair weather, calm or nearly so, the 
bellowing of a large herd (which sometimes contains a thousand) may 
be heard at the extraordinary distance of ten miles at least. 
During the rutting season, or while fighting, (we are not sure which ) 
the bulls scrape or paw up the grass in a circle, sometimes ten feet in di- 
ameter, and these places being resorted to, from time to time, by other 
fighting bulls, become larger and deeper, and are easily recognised even 
after rains have filled them with water. 
In winter, when the ice has become strong enough to bear the 
weight of many tons. Buffaloes are often drowned in great numbers, for 
they are in the habit of crossing rivers on the ice, and should any alarm 
occur, rush in a dense crowd to one place ; the ice gives way beneath the 
pressure of hundreds of these huge animals, they are precipitated into the 
water, and if it is deep enough to reach over their backs, soon perish 
Should the water, however, be shallow, they scuffle through the broken 
and breaking ice, in the greatest disorder, to the shore. 
From time to time small herd.s, crossing rivers on the ice in the spring 
are set adrift, in consequence of the sudden breaking of the ice after a 
rise in the river. They have been seen floating on such occasions in 
groups of three, four, and sometimes eight or ten together, although on 
separate cakes of ice. A few stragglers have been known to reach the 
shore in an almost exhausted state, but the majority perish from cold and 
want of food rather than trust themselves boldly to the turbulent waters. 
Buffalo calves are often drowned, from being unable to ascend the steep 
banks of the rivers across which they have just swam, as the cows cannot 
help them, although they stand near the bank, and will not leave them to 
their fate unless something alarms them. 
