476 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



spring. The tail is the well-known chowry of Hiudostan ; 

 but in this country its strong, wiry, and pliant hair is made 

 into ropes, which for strength do not yield to those manufac- 

 tured from hemp. The hair of the body is woven into mats, 

 and also into a strong fabric which makes excellent riding- 

 trousers. The milk of the yak is richer than that of the 

 common cow, though the quantity it yields is less." There is 

 no part of the world " where there are such numbers of wild 

 animals as may be met on the slopes of northern Thibet. 

 Here, in one day, the traveller may see hundreds of herds of 

 yaks, wild asses, and antelopes, and these show no signs 

 of alarm at the approach of man. Their numbers may be 

 estimated not by tens or hundreds of thousands, but by 

 millions."* This animal, then, milk-bearing, load-carrying, 

 garment-supplying, assembling in droves, with horns of ox 

 and tail of horse, loving the cold and ice, may have been the 

 true primal domestic animal of that land of the early Aryans 

 where there were " two months of summer and ten of winter." 

 The \N Old aleph, the Semitic word for "ox," was certainly 

 anciently applied to this animal. Schraderf says of the 

 obelisk of Salmanassar that the word "ox" refers to the 

 jak-ox represented on the corresponding relief. 



* Prejevalesky's "Journeys and Discoveries in Central Asia," "Trans. 

 Eoy. Geographical Soc," April, 1887, 223. 

 t " Cuneiform Inscriptions," vol. i., 177. 



