than the hind-quarters. The horns are short and thick, the hoofs are
cloven, and the tail is short, with a tuft of hair at the extremity.

It is scarcely possible to conceive a wilder or more ferocious and
terrible monster than a buffalo bull. He often grows to the enormous
weight of two thousand pounds. His lion-like mane falls in shaggy
confusion quite over his head and shoulders, down to the ground. When
he is wounded he becomes imbued with the spirit of a tiger: he stamps,
bellows, roars, and foams forth his rage with glaring eyes and
steaming nostrils, and charges furiously at man and horse with utter
recklessness. Fortunately, however, he is not naturally pugnacious,
and can be easily thrown into a sudden panic. Moreover, the peculiar
position of his eye renders this creature not so terrible as he would
otherwise be to the hunter. Owing to the stiff structure of the neck,
and the sunken, downward-looking eyeball, the buffalo cannot, without
an effort, see beyond the direct line of vision presented to the
habitual carriage of his head. When, therefore, he is wounded, and
charges, he does so in a straight line, so that his pursuer can
leap easily out of his way. The pace of the buffalo is clumsy, and
_apparently_ slow, yet, when chased, he dashes away over the plains in
blind blundering terror, at a rate that leaves all but good horses
far behind. He cannot keep the pace up, however, and is usually soon
overtaken. Were the buffalo capable of the same alert and agile
motions of head and eye peculiar to the deer or wild horse, in
addition to his "bovine rage," he would be the most formidable brute
on earth. There is no object, perhaps, so terrible as the headlong
advance of a herd of these animals when thoroughly aroused by terror.
They care not for their necks. All danger in front is forgotten, or
not seen, in the terror of that from which they fly. No thundering
cataract is more tremendously irresistible than the black bellowing
torrent which sometimes pours through the narrow defiles of the Rocky
Mountains, or sweeps like a roaring flood over the trembling plains.

The wallowing, to which we have referred, is a luxury usually indulged
in during the hot months of summer, when the buffaloes are tormented
by flies, and heat, and drought. At this season they seek the low
grounds in the prairies where there is a little stagnant water lying
amongst the grass, and the ground underneath, being saturated, is
soft. The lea