1747 Virginia Land Patents & Grants in Amer. Speech (1940) 15 280/2 Crossing the said Run above a Lick.

1750 T. Walker Jrnl. Explor. (1888) 51 At the mouth of a Creek..is a Lick, and I believe there was a hundred Buffaloes at it.

1751 C. Gist Jrnls. (1893) 42 Salt Licks, or Ponds, formed by little Streams or Dreins of Water.

1784 J. F. D. Smyth Tour U.S.A. I. xviii. 141 Licks are particular places..where the clay or earth is impregnated with saline particles.

1796 J. Morse Amer. Universal Geogr. (new ed.) I. 663 Salt Lick and Salt Spring are used synonymously, but improperly, as the former differs from the latter in that it is dry.

1807 P. Gass Jrnls. 219 One of our sergeants shot a deer at a lick close to our camp.

a1816 B. Hawkins Sketch Creek Country 1798 & 1799 in Coll. Georgia Hist. Soc. (1848) III. 29 Parallel with this, are some licks in post and red oak saplin flats.

1825 J. Pickering Jrnl. 21 Dec. in Emigration (1830) v. 49 Deer will go miles to the salt spring, or ‘licks’ as they are called.

1827 J. F. Cooper Prairie I. v. 78 To rout the unlawful settlers who had gathered nigh the Buffaloe lick in old Kentucky.

1832 J. McGregor Brit. Amer. II. 556 Both buffalo and deer resort to them for the purpose of licking the salt off the shrubs hence the name lick.

1841 J. F. Cooper Deerslayer I. iv. 67 Like deer standing at a lick.

1877 N. S. Shaler App. to J. A. Allen's Amer. Bison 458 The springs at Big-Bone Lick, as at all the other licks of Kentucky are sources of saline waters derived from the older Palaeozoic rocks.

1957 Beaver Summer 37/2 The goat evidently was headed for the same lick from which the sheep were returning.