46 LEAVES FROM MY NOTE-BOOK. 



turned nostrils, give these cattle a most ludicrous, self-confident 

 air of defiance. Many important anatomical variations occur in 

 the skull ; the lachrymal bone, for instance, articulates with the 

 premaxillary, and thus excludes the maxillary from any junction 

 with the nasal. In fact, hardly a bone of the skull presents the 

 same exact shape as that of the common ox. 



So far back as 1760 these catde were kept as curiosities near 

 Buenos Ayres, and the race was believed to have originated with 

 the Indians southward of the Plata. In any case, however, the 

 divergence of race could not have begun further back than the 

 year 1552, when cattle were first introduced. The breed is very 

 true, and has lasted at least a century (Darwin writes in 1868). A 

 Niata bull and cow invariably produce Niata calves ; a Niata bull 

 crossed with a common cow and the reverse cross, yield offspring 

 having an intermediate character, but with the Niata peculiarities 

 strongly displayed. 



When the pasture is tolerably long the Niatas feed as well as 

 common cattle with their tongue and palate ; but during the great 

 droughts, when so many animals perish on the Pampos, the Niatas 

 would, if not attended to, become extinct ; for the common cattle, 

 like horses, are able to keep alive by browsing with their lips on 

 the twigs of trees and on reeds. This the Niatas cannot .so well 

 do, as their lips do not join, and hence they are found to perish 

 before the common cattle. It shows also how natural selection 

 would have determined the rejection of the Niata modification, if 

 it had existed in a state of nature.* 



Survival through Browsing on Twigs and Leaves. 



Apropos of the faculty of keeping alive by browsing on leaves 

 and twigs, a lady friend on a ranch in British Columbia told me 

 they were waiting for a " wood cow." I wondered what particular 

 kind of animal this might be, when she explained that cattle 

 reared in a wooded district would thrive and even grow fat in the 

 " bush," where prairie cattle would starve. On a ranch at Hatzic 

 Prairie, the cattle accustomed to the country took to the woods 

 during one severe winter, and in the spring returned in good con- 

 dition, whilst the cattle which had remained on the prairie died in 



* Animals and Plants under Domestication, Darwin, Vol. I., pp. 93-4. 



