86 OKIGIN AND TEAI^SFER OF DOMESTIC QUADEUPEDS. 



after the downfall of their commonwealth ; and that his first ap 

 pearance in Western Africa is more recent still. The Bactrian 

 camel was certainly brought from Asia Minor to the Northern 

 shores of the Black Sea, by the Goths, in the third or fourth 

 century, and the buffalo first appeared in Italy about a.d. 600, 

 though it is unknown whence or by whom he was introduced.* 

 The Arabian single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been car- 

 ried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced into Austraha, 

 Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to Httle pur- 

 pose in Yenezuela, and finally imported by the American Govern- 

 ment into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the chmate and 

 the vegetable products best suited to its wants, and promises to 

 become a very useful agent in the promotion of the special civil- 

 ization for which those regions are adapted. The buffalo was 

 introduced into Italy by the Lombards, a.d. 595-6. According 

 to the Italia Agricola, there were, in 1862, sixty-five thousand 

 buffaloes in the Southern Provinces of that country. 

 , Quadrupeds, both domestic and wild, bear the privations and 

 ' discomforts of long voyages better than would be supposed. The 

 elephant, the giraffe, the rhinoceros, and even the hippopotamus, 

 ■ do not seem to suffer much at sea. Some of the camels imported 

 hj the TJ. S. Government into Texas from the Crimea and 

 Northern Africa were a whole year on shipboard. On the other 

 hand, George Sand, in Un Hiver au Midi, gives an amusing 

 description of the sea-sickness of swine in the short passage from 

 the Baleares to Barcelona. 



America had no domestic quadruped except a species of dog, 

 the lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or buffalo.f 



appear in the sculptures before the XV. and XVI. dynasties. But even then, 

 the horse was only known as a draught animal, and the only representation of 

 a horseman yet found in the Egyptian tombs is on the blade of a battle-axe of 

 uncertain origin and period. 



* Erdkunde, viii., Aden, Iste AUheilung, pp. 660, 758. Hehn, Kulturp- 

 Jlanzen, p. 345. 



f See Chapter 111., post; also Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur, 1., p. 71. 

 From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or auerochs, found 

 among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient Switzerland, and from 

 other circumstances, it is inferred that this animal had been domesticated by 

 that people ; and it is stated, I know not upon what authority, in Le Aljd ehe 

 eingoTU) V Italia, that it had been tamed by the Veneti also. See Ltell, An 



