OF THE OX. 17 



the ground, herbivorous animals wander in vain 

 from field to field in quest of sustenance to re- 

 store their strength, or of pure and healthy 

 water to slake their thirst ; their vital resistance 

 dwindles away, deleterious gases poison and 

 bewilder them, their blood is debased, and as 

 Ovid says, 



" Corpora fceda jacent, vitiantur odoribus herbse." 



And since these mild and harmless animals, 

 which seem to have been created merely to 

 clothe us, and to nourish us with their milk 

 and flesh, have not been endowed by nature 

 either with the intelligence, or the activity, or 

 the cunning, or the invention, or the skill be- 

 stowed on the omnivorous and carnivorous 

 species, hard is their fate under the pressing 

 needs of hunger. Peaceful creatures, they 

 browse in vain on deleterious plants on a 

 sterile soil; their external and internal tegu- 

 ments now afford a favourable seat for the 

 propagation of parasites for the parasito- 

 genia ; and soon after a general adynamia, 

 or relaxation of the fibres, delivers them up 

 without resistance to the morbific elements 

 of the infectious diseases to which they are 



c 



