stkwart] NATURE STUDY IN ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS 63 



and much more are what did take place summer before last at our 

 doorstep, and probably at thousands of others throughout the country. 

 Meager as our knowledge of the common wild animals is, the 

 situation is not much improved when we turn to the domestic side. 

 In spite of the intimate daily contact with many of our domesticated 

 animals, how much do we really know about them? How many of 

 us have even a fairly complete and accurate picture of them as they 

 originated and lived in the past ? as they live now upon the earth ? 

 What native traits and capacities enabled them to succeed in the wild 

 where so many others failed? What attracted man to their aid and 

 use ? What objectionable traits have been eliminated ? What are 

 their present uses and breeds, over the earth ; and how have they 

 been produced ? How should they be fed and cared for ? How 

 many of us know the majority of these things concerning even one 

 domestic animal ? Yet this is only a part of what Professor Forbes 

 believes the study of our domestic animals should bring out. If this 

 plan is applied to the horse, ox, sheep, cat, dog, pig, chicken, and 

 turkey, it is evident that abundant work of a kind very near home 

 will be provided. To illustrate its workings we present a brief out- 

 lined study of our most important domestic animal, the ox. This 

 study is a modification of some work done under Forbes and Daven- 

 port at the University of Illinois, and the sources used were the works 

 of Schmeil, Darwin, Geikie, and Lydekker, together with stock 

 records. This is an excellent, practical field for investigation and 

 essay work by some of the older pupils for report to the class. 



The Story of the Ox 



•Far back in the past before there were any people ; before the ice- 

 sheets had swept down from the North ; while mastodons, colossal 

 ruminants, fierce carnivora, and troops of rhinoceroses and elephants 

 held sway ; when it would have been really dangerous to try to live ; 

 in those times which geologists call the^Pliocene period, there appeared 

 in Furope a huge, massive, light colored wild ox. It appears to have 

 sprung from a race of large antelopes, and it was apparent from the 

 first that it was going to make no mean race in the struggle for life. 

 With its keen sense of sight, smell and hearing, the dimmed traces of 

 which remain today in the elongated, horizontal pupils of eyes once 

 bright and beady, in the large, moist nostrils, and in the trumpet- 

 shaped movable ears, it was not easily surprised. When once at bay 

 it plied its sharp horns, often fifty inches in span, with a powerful neck 



