river, and only in the upper portions of North and South Carolina did it extend beyond the Alleghanies.
The habitat of the buffalo included feeding-grounds, stamping-grounds, wallows and licks. Their feeding-grounds embraced the meadow valleys where the choicest grazing was to be found.[1] The habit of keeping together in immense herds while feeding soon exhausted the food in any single locality and rendered a slow, constant movement necessary. A herd so immense that it remained in the sight of a traveler for days required a vast area of feeding-ground to sustain it during a season.
When a herd rested to ruminate the buffaloes arranged themselves in a peculiar, characteristic manner—the young always in the center with the mothers, the males forming a compact circle around them. By such a conformation were the "stamping-grounds" made—each animal crowding and pushing from the outside of the herd, where flies and insects were more troublesome, toward the center.
- ↑ Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Kentucky, vol. i., part ii.
