Judge, 1912-03-09 · page 17 of 24
Judge — March 9, 1912 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is satirical pseudoscience disguised as educational content. The text humorously "explains" buffalo anatomy with absurd logic: the animal's heavy head is balanced by its tail (so it won't tip forward), its hair grows *inward* from inches away from skin, and it has unlucky thirteen rib pairs. The joke references Buffalo, New York near Niagara Falls, playing on the city name. Actual factual claims mix with obvious fabrications—buffaloes can toss elephants over prairie trees (which don't exist there), birds playing "hide and seek" on buffalo hides originated the game. The final punchline: buffaloes aren't kept as pets because they damage furniture with their horns. This mocks both pseudo-intellectual "natural history" writing popular in the era and readers who might believe such nonsense. The cartoons' exaggerated illustrations reinforce the absurdity. It's gentle, playful satire rather than pointed political commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
UNNATURAL HISTORY LESSONS. The Buffalo. THE BUFFALO is a four-footed quadruped which derives his name from a large city near Niagara Falls. He is a strongly constructed beast with many peculiarities. His head is large and heavy; so heavy in fact, that were it not for the weight of his long tufted tail he would be continu- ally tipping up and standing on his muzzle. This would interfere with his eating, as the buffalo is a muzzle-loader, so we congratulate him on his heavy tail. The buffalo wears a large amount of hair on his head and face. This hair, instead of commencing at the skin and growing out, commences a number of inches away from the skin and grows in. He has very little hair around the waist, but there is a sizable beard on the lower end of his tail. The buffalo has only thirteen pairs of ribs. This is an unlucky number, and was perhaps the cause of the buffaloes’ ina- bility to continue their residence on the western plains. Buffaloes have horns, but they cannot blow them. They use them to annoy their enemies with. It’s said that a buffalo in good working order will toss an elephant over the highest tree in the prairie. But as there are no elephants or trees in the prairie we may put this down as a canard (meaning hoax; ridiculous fabrication.) In India a species of bird perches on a buffalo’s hide and seeks the little ticks that are wont to tickle him. This is the way the game of hide and seek originated. You should never get buffalo and the bison mixed. The bison is an American make, while the buffalo is imported. Buffaloes are by no means shy, but as they injure the furniture by scarring it with their horns they are not cultivated as domestic pets. Guts, ee |e comicbooks.com