NEAT CATTLE. 27 



magnificent tomb of which has been recently exhumed nor do 

 we look with complacency on the present worship of the Brahma 

 bull, which has been from time immemorial an object of Pagan 

 idolatry in India ; but it is evident that these subjects of adora- 

 tion originated in a most devout appreciation of the admirable 

 and useful qualities of the genus to which they belonged. 



The author of the book of Job, which the eminent sacred 

 chronologist, Doctor Hales, dates back to the year 2,337 before 

 the Christian Era whether that author was Job himself, or one 

 of his cotemporaries had a most poetic appreciation of the 

 value of domestic animals. He makes Job in the days of his 

 revived prosperity, the owner of "one thousand yoke of oxen," 

 in the enumeration of his great wealth of goods and chattels. 

 Jeremiah B. C. 628 years, in one of his Prophesies speaks 

 of "a fair heifer." Among the Pagan writers, Homer, eighteen 

 hundred years before the Christian Era, celebrates the noble 

 bullocks with ''golden knobs," or balls, "on the tips of their 

 horns," and describes the manner of the artisan in putting them 

 on. Among the heathen deities, Juno is named as "ox eyed," 

 in those clear and liquid features of her countenance. Virgil, 

 who wrote his Georgiacs just before the birth of Christ, cele- 

 brates the beautiful cattle of the Roman Campagnas, and their 

 value in the agriculture of the people. 



Oxen were used for labor in husbandry, and more or less in 

 commerce, in all countries where neat cattle were kept, and could 

 endure the climate well, as being the most convenient beast of 

 burden. It is probable that they were bred in their best estate 

 by those who used them, and the cows were cultivated for dairy 

 and household uses in the family. As they spread west 

 and north into the higher latitudes and elevations of Europe, 

 they somewhat changed their characters and became, as now 

 known there, acclimated and fitted to their new conditions, and 

 inured to the habits of the people who kept them. We may 



