312 On the Origin and Natural History 



vceus). There is only one well determined species peculiar to 

 Africa, the Cape Buffalo (B. Coffer). 



In relation to the localities of species, it thus appears that 

 the zone inhabited by the genus Bos stretches obliquely across 

 all climates; and that each species, with the exception of the 

 bull and the buffalo, now widely dispersed from their original 

 centres through the dominating influence of man, is confined 

 within certain ci:cumscribed limits, in which it is retained, as 

 well by natural barriers as by instinctive inclination. The 

 difference in the habits of life observable between the Ameri- 

 can and European bisons, would, of itself, suffice to establish 

 the specific distinction of these animals. Had they been iden- 

 tical, the aurochs, or European species, would have preserved 

 in America tha_t love of retirement which induces it to dwell 

 in the central solicitudes of forests, where (in that of Hercynia) 

 it was found in the days of Caesar, as it now is in those 

 of Lithuania and the Carpathian Mountains. The American 

 bison, on the contrary, congregates in large troops, and de- 

 lights to dwell in those open plains or prairies which produce 

 a thick and abundant pasture. The musk ox, without avoid- 

 ing such stinted forests as the sterile regions to which it is 

 native are capable of producing, yet dwells for the greater 

 part of the year among the rocky and almost ice- covered 

 countries of the extreme north, " creating an appetite under 

 the ribs of death," with little wherewithal to appease that 

 appetite after it is created. The Buffalo (of Asiatic origin) is 

 an animal of almost amphibious habits, fond of the long, 

 coarse, rank pasture which springs up in moist and undrained 

 lands. Hence its love of the Pontian marshes, where, ac- 

 cording to Scaliger, it will lie for hours submerged almost to 

 the very muzzle — an instinctive habit which it exhibits equally 

 in Timor, where it was .more recently seen to indulge in its 

 aquatic propensities in a similar manner by Dr. Quoy, of the 

 Uranie.' The Yack inhabits elevated ranges, and the cool and 

 lofty table lands of central Asia. The Buffalo of the Cape, 

 in this respect resembling the aurochs, prefers the dense 

 forests of Southern Africa, though, in the form and volume 

 of its horns, it in some degree coincides in character with the 

 musk-ox, located under a different and very distant clime. 

 All these species, then, with the exceptions above stated, may 

 be regarded as the aborigines of the countries where they now 

 occur. 



The urus, or wild bull of ancient authors, may, I think, be 

 reasonably regarded as the origin of our domestic kinds, and 

 it may now also be considered as extinct, at least in Europe. 

 Although we cannot trace it to those temperate regions of Asia, 

 where the human race is supposed to have had its creation and 

 increase, and where probably all those species which man had 

 contrived to subjugate at an early period of his own career, 



