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On the. Origin and Natural History of the Ox and its 

 allied Species. By James Wilson, Esq. F. R. S. &c. 



[Abridged from the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, No. VIII.] 



The domestication of the dog demonstrates the power of the 

 human race over even a strictly carnivorous animal — and the 

 subjugation of the common cat is another equally familiar 

 example, which might have reminded the great French na- 

 turalist that it was not the ruminatiug and herbivorous ani- 

 mals alone which had become subservient to the will of man. 

 The last named quadruped (and, among birds, domestic poul- 

 try illustrate the same point,) also proves, that man in some 

 instances has subdued not the individuals alone, but the en- 

 tire species— for it is known that there are several of our 

 domestic animals, of which the personal researches of travel- 

 lers, and the learning and ingenuity of naturalists, however 

 assidiously exerted, have as yet sought in vain to discover the 

 original sources. From this w# cannot positively infer that 

 they are extinct, but we may fairly infer, that if they exist 

 at all they must occupy some remote and unknown corner of 

 the earth, and be very uninfluential compared with the great- 

 ly preponderating mass of individuals which now dwell under 

 the fostering care of man, and may be said really to consti- 

 tute the species. 



Buffon appears to have admitted of only two kinds of cattle, 

 the bull and the buffalo. A wild bull, the source of all our 

 domestic breeds, synonymous with the Aurochs of Europe, 

 with the Bison of America, and the Zebu of Africa, and of 

 Asia, were all regarded by him as varieties of one and the 

 same species, produced by climate, food, and domestication. 

 The humped backs of the Bison and Zebu, according to the 

 imaginative views of the eloquent Frenchman, were signs of 

 slavery produced hy grossness and excess of feeding, and he 

 sought to eseape the dilemma presented by the existence of 

 wild cattle with jhumped backs, by at once asserting, that 

 these were either an emancipated tribe, originally descended 

 from an enslaved and deteriorated race, or constituted ia 

 themselves a natural variety of which the hump was charac- 

 teristic. According to the same authority, it was a humped 

 variety, which, passing from the north of Europe or Asia, 

 to the American Continent, gave rise to the Bison breed of 

 that country, — a theory which he thinks strongly confirmed 

 by the fact, that both the Aurochs of the Old World, and its 

 representative in the new, smell strongly of musk ! So con- 

 fused were his notions in many respects concerning thes» 



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