Ernest Ingersoll

“ The behavior of the buffaloes is very much like that of domestic cattle, but their speed and endurance seem to be far greater. When well under way it takes a fleet horse to overtake them, and they raise a column of dust which marks their progress when miles away. They swim rivers with ease, even amid floating ice, and show a surprising agility and expertness in making their way down precipitous cliffs and banks of streams, plunging headlong where a man would pick his way with hesitation. ”

“ Conservator of ancient ways, it is almost the only swallow which has not attached itself to humanity as soon as it had opportunity, and changed from a savage to a civilized bird. Perhaps it, too, has tried it, long ago, and voluntarily returned to the fields; for our bank-swallow is a cosmopolite, and has watched the rise and fall of all the dynasties and nationalities that have grouped the centuries into eras, from Nineveh to San Francisco. It is at present an inhabitant of all Europe and eastward to China; of a large part of Africa, especially in winter ”

“ If not alarmed at sight or smell of a foe, he will stand stupidly gazing at his companions in their death-throes until the whole herd is shot down. He will walk unconsciously into a quicksand or quagmire already choked with struggling, dying victims.” Having made up his mind to go a certain way, it is almost impossible to swerve him from his purpose, and he will rush heedless into sure destruction. Two trains were “ditched”in one week on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad by herds of buffaloes rushing blindly against and in front of them. ”

“ The half-breeds are large, fine animals, possessing most of the characteristics of their wild parentage. They can be broken to the yoke, but are not so sober and manageable in their work as the tame breed—sometimes, for instance, making a dash for the nearest water, with disastrous results to the load they are drawing. It is somewhat difficult, also, to make a fence which shall resist the destructive strength of their head and horns. But the efforts at taming buffaloes have not been many or seriously carried on, and no attempt appears to have been made to perpetuate an unmixed domestic race. ”

“ The fate of extermination so surely awaits, sooner or later, the buffalo in its wild state, that its domestication becomes a matter of great interest, and is well worthy the attention of intelligent stock-growers, some of whom should be willing to take a little trouble to perpetuate the pure race in a domestic state. ”

“ The buffalo is nomadic in its habits, roaming in the course of the year over vast areas in search of food or safety. The fires that annually sweep across thousands of square miles of the grassy plains, the ravages of grasshoppers, often destroying equally extensive tracts of vegetation, and the habit of keeping in compact herds, which soon exhaust the herbage of a single region, all compel constant movement. There is a popular belief that the buffaloes used to migrate from the northern plains to Texas in fall and back again in spring, but this seems erroneous. ”

“ It seems strange, then, that birds who sustain the unremitting exertion of a flight scarcely less than 100 miles an hour in speed, during the whole of a long summer's day, should not be thought capable of the transition from England to Africa. However, at that time it was not well understood what long-continued flight small birds actually do make, as, for instance, from our coast to the Bahamas, or even across to Ireland, or from Egypt to Heligoland, 1,200 miles, which is passed over at a single flight by a certain tiny warbler, in every migration. ”

“ Morris, a close observer of British birds, says, per contra, that a fortnight is required, and that the bird removes twenty ounces of sand a day. Male and female alternate in the labor of digging, and in the duties of incubation.
When the female is sitting, you may thrust your arm in and grasp her, and, notwithstanding the noise and violence attending the enlargement of the aperture of her nest-hole, she will sit resolutely on, and allow herself to be taken in the hand with scarcely a struggle or sign of resistance—even of life, sometimes. ”

“ When belligerent, the old bulls make the most blustering demonstrations, but are really cowardly. Facing the approaching hunter with a boastful and defiant air, they will pace to and fro,threateningly pawing the earth, only to take to their heels the next moment. The bulls greatly enjoy pawing the earth and throwing it up with their horns, digging into banks or getting down upon one knee to strike into the level surface, so that the sheaths of their horns are always badly splintered. ”

“ Year by year since, the limits of the range of each division have been contracting under relentless persecution and the encroachments of civilization, until now they are easily circumscribed. The poor beasts have been hunted by the Indians, have been followed incessantly by white men—professional hunters, sportsmen, hide-seekers, and soldiers—who have been afforded easy access to their haunts by the railroads which have penetrated to their ancient pastures, and been given the means of keeping up the hunt by the nearness of the frontier settlements to the resorts of each herd. ”

“ Hewitson tells us of, are often sharp enough to make their entrée from above: school-boys regard the pink-white eggs a fine prize; and, last and worst of all, the bank-swallows are many times utterly worried out of their galleries by fleas and young horse-flies, which swarm and increase in their nests until the bird finds endurance no longer a virtue, and digs a new latebra. ”

“ Like the other species of the bovine group the bison is of a sluggish disposition, and mild and timid, ferocious as his shaggy head and vicious eye make him look. He rarely attacks, except in the last hopeless effort of self-defense. ”

“ Emigrant trains used to be delayed by the passing of dense herds, and during the first years of the Kansas Pacific railway its trains were frequently stopped by the same cause. These masses seem to have some sort of organization, consisting of small bands which unite in migration or when pursued, but separate when feeding. The cows, with their calves and the younger animals, are generally toward the middle of the small herd, while the older bulls are found on the outside, and the patriarchs of the herd bring up the rear. ”

“ The great center of buffalo-life in ages past was the vast expanse of treeless plains which stretch uninterruptedly from the Texas coasts almost to the Arctic Circle, and here, in restricted areas, they have survived until the present time. ”

“ Although the main chain of the Rocky Mountains has been supposed commonly to form the western limit of the range of the buffalo, there is abundant proof of its former existence over a vast area west of it, including a large part of the Utah Basin, the Green River plateau, and the plains of the Columbia, westward to the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and the Sierra Nevada. Evidence of this is found in the bleached skulls, in accounts of early explorers, and in traditions of the Indians. During the very severe and snowy winter of 1836-'37 large herds were lost through starvation ”

“ PERHAPS no indigenous animal of this country has attracted more attention or met with a greater number of biographers than the bison or buffalo. Its history has been a tale of extermination, and a very few years are likely to see the last of these noble beasts roaming over the Plains. For hundreds of years the few that remain of the herds of aurochs, the European bison, have been kept in the parks of the nobility ”

“ Ordinarily, however, the buffalo exhibits commendable sagacity in his choice of routes, usually taking the easiest grades and the most direct course, so that a buffalo-trail—often worn deep into the ground—can be depended on as affording the most feasible road through the region it traverses. ”

“ The truth is that these protectors, fancied so alert, are the most easily approached of any of the flock, and the real guardians are the vigilant cows themselves, who usually lead the movements of the herd. ”

“ During the rutting-season the bulls wage fierce battles, but they rarely result fatally. The short horns are not very dangerous weapons, and the masses of hair on the forehead break the force of the stunning collisions. At this season the bulls become lean, regaining their flesh in autumn, while the cows are fattest in June. ”

“ Before the intersection of the West by railroads and emigrant trails their movements were more regular, no doubt, than at present, and slight northward and southward migrations are well attested as occurring in Texas and also on the Saskatchewan plains; but the herds constantly winter as far north as the latter region, and for twenty-five years have not passed southward even to the Platte. In the extreme north they leave the exposed plains in winter and take shelter among the wooded hills. ”

“ Why this species should depart so far from the habits of its congeners as to thrive best in the arctic climate of these mountaintops, is strange. This Microphysa was afterward met with in the valleys south of these Sierras, and in the mountains west of North Park. In this same southern group of mountains many other shells were found—at a lesser altitude, but where water froze every night in August—of the same species as existed in other parts of the Territory, and, indeed, all over the Central Province. ”

“ My list of the Rocky Mountain mollusca, on the contrary, shows that 55 species out of the 138 inhabit heights exceeding 5,000 feet, and 10 species have been found above 10,000 feet. These latter, however, are all recorded from mountains south of the thirty-ninth parallel; but it is safe to say that, where there is moisture, a goodly collection of mollusks can be made in the mountains of the Territories all the way up to the timber-line. This is probably true of all parts of the world. ”

“ Sometimes the parents forsake their progeny in the nest, and seem generally to care less for them than is usual among swallows.
But not the young alone are exposed to enemies. It would seem as though the situation of the nest precluded invasion, yet if they are near the haunts of the house-sparrow they are sure to be dispossessed of their homes by that buccaneer. Snakes, too, can sometimes reach their holes ”

“ The early explorers of the Mississippi Valley believed that the buffalo might be made to take the place of the domestic ox in agricultural pursuits, and at the same time yield a fleece of wool equal in quality to that of the sheep ”

“ Like the limneas, the planorbs were extremely fragile in texture, which may be owing partly to the soft bottom, and partly to the scarcity of lime in the water; and they were distinguished by a short vertical diameter, which peculiarity, also, may have been acquired by them from the necessities of their habitat, since snails having shells with small breadth of beam could most advantageously pass between the stalks of standing water-plants that everywhere crowded the pond. ”

“ With the appearance of the buffalo, which only a few decades ago swarmed in prodigious herds over nearly a third of North America, all are familiar. The male measures about nine feet from the muzzle to the insertion of the tail; the female about six and a half feet. The height to the top of the hump of the male is five and a half to six feet, and of the female about five feet, sloping in each case to a height at the hips of four and a half to four feet. The weight of the old males is nearly two thousand pounds, while the cows weigh one thousand to twelve hundred pounds. ”

“ In this way we have seen one of these birds cling with its sharp claws to the face of a sand-bank, and peg in its bill as a miner would his pickaxe, till it had loosened a considerable portion of the hard sand, and tumbled it down among the rubbish below. In these preliminary operations it never makes use of its claws for digging; indeed, it is impossible that it could, for
they are indispensable in maintaining its position, at least when it is beginning its hole. ”

“ The caverns of Kentucky and Tennessee, which were the homes of the aboriginal people of the region, and receptacles for their dead, and where have been found skeletons of the beaver, deer, wolf, bear, and many other mammals, have never yielded any bones of the bison. ”

“ THE bird which is the subject of this sketch is familiar to all who walk in green pastures and beside still waters; for in such haunts do the Bank-Swallows congregate in merry companies, making up for their want of companionship with man, which is so characteristic of the other hirundines, by a large sociability among themselves. ”

“ Hence it would be worth inquiry to examine what particular genus of insects affords the principal food of each respective species of swallow." They are constantly on the wing, skimming low over land and loch, pausing not even to drink or bathe, but simply dropping into some limpid lake as they sweep by to sip a taste of water, or cleanse their dirty coats. ”

“ The horns are short, thick at the base, curved, and sharply pointed; the hoofs are short and broad; the short tail ends in a tuft of long hairs. In winter the head and whole under parts are blackish-brown; the upper surface lighter, fading as spring advances. Young animals are of a darker, richer brown than the old ones, age bleaching the thick masses of long, woolly hair, which falls so abundantly over the shoulders and face, to a light yellowish-brown. ”

“ There existed in countless numbers in this lake a large species of coil-shell which was a nondescript, and which I have since named Helisoma plexata. Each of the hundreds of individuals seen possessed in a more or less marked degree a twisted appearance, resulting from a change in the plane of revolution in old age, which is the most striking specific character. This sudden change in the directness of the growth causes the carina of the third whorl to rise into a sharp shoulder on the right side, while on the opposite side the third whorl sinks underneath the overflowing outer whorl. ”