558 



BOS. 



This double classification, or rather the taking 

 care not to be led away by it, is a very important 

 matter in the useful study of natural history, not only 

 as it prevents those views about the origin of animal.*, 

 into which they who examine no farther than the 

 external differences are in constant danger of tailing, 

 but as it is of real and practical use to those who use 

 the animals for domestic purposes. Every well- 

 informed grazier knows that he may obtain any shade 

 of character that he pleases between the widest ex- 

 tremes that are to be found in the domestic varieties ; 

 and thus he can breed for the table, the dairy, or the 

 draught, with equal facility. So can he also breed 

 for the pasture, both as to climate and to kind of 

 food. Thus, in whatever part of the country there is 

 food and necessity for one of those animals, that 

 animal can always be the one most profitable in that 

 particular locality, and this extended over the whole 

 country renders grass and grazing profitable to the 

 very maximum in a national point of view. All this 

 may be done with a very moderate degree of know- 

 ledge, if that knowledge is of the right kind. The 

 breeds must be known in their qualities and in their 

 effects upon each other in crossing, both of which are 

 matters of simple observation ; and if there be added 

 a knowledge of the local causes, the climate, the food, 

 and the treatment, and the extent to which they 

 influence the character of the breed, then the grazier 

 has only to act according to his knowledge to obtain 

 the most certain and profitable result. But the 

 foundation of the whole is the fertility of the produce 

 of these crossings. 



It is worthy of remark, that this general fertility, 

 and the advantages which result from it, are con- 

 spicuous in proportion as the animals possess the 

 other qualities which facilitate their domestication, 

 and also those which render them useful in the do- 

 mestic state. It is in this, and not in what has been 

 called the sagacity, and sometimes " an inferior kind 

 of reason," that the nearest approach to man on the 

 part of the other animals consists. When we take up 

 the hypothesis of the " inferior reason," we at once 

 get upon dangerous ground, and are mired if we 

 venture a step. But here we are not only quite safe, 

 but upon an elevated rock, which commands a wide 

 view of the beauty and utility of nature such a view 

 as is of itself sufficient to convince us how bountifully 

 we have been treated, and by whom. The sagacity 

 of the dog has not only been selected as the nearest 

 approximation to thought in man, but the dog has 

 sometimes been called the means of civilisation, or, at 

 all events, the stimulus to it, while the ox has been 

 put aside with the brand of stupidity, and the sheep 

 with that of silliness. Yet it is this very stupidity 

 and silliness, or rather that which has been so called, 

 not very wisely, which forms the value of these fore- 

 most 01 all animals in an economical point of view. 

 The natives of New Holland, when first discovered 

 by Europeans, had dogs, but they had neither clothing 

 nor habitations. They cultivated no plant, and their 

 traditional history did not go back to the whole live: 

 of their immediate fathers, nor did their knowledge 

 of geography extend beyond the hill or the flood 

 which bounded their immediate horizon. As they 

 were savage men, their companion was a savage dog ; 

 but still they had it, and it was the only wholly 

 placental animal, except some very small ones, to be 

 found in their country. 



Man is, as we have had repeated occasion to 



remark, of all living creatures, the best fitted for 

 enduring varieties of climate, in respect both of heat 

 and cold, and of drought and moisture. This is more 

 an animal than a mental adaptation in man, and 

 therefore it is one in which the analogy of the other 

 animals, so far as they agree or disagree with man, 

 may be admitted without the least impropriety. The 

 approximation toward this may be taken as the lead- 

 ing ground of the fitness of animals for domestication, 

 as it enables man to take them along with him in all 

 his migrations. And no one can refrain from noticing 

 how perfectly the number and value of the uses of 

 animals to man, and also their obedience to his 

 culture, in fitting the breed to the place and the 

 purpose, accord with this pliancy to climate. The ox 

 stands foremost in pliancy both to nature and to art ; 

 so does he in utility. Alive, he gives his strength 

 for labour ; and dead, his body for food : and, as 

 civilisation advances, there is no part of that body 

 which may not be turned to some useful purpose. 

 No doubt he is, as a labouring animal, better adapted 

 to the more early, than to the more advanced, 

 stages of civilisation ; and in Britain, and some other 

 places, the race is bred almost exclusively for the 

 dairy or the table. But, if we take the working 

 world, in all its breadth, we shall find that there is, 

 even at the present time, more of its agriculture and 

 its carrying labour performed bv the genus bos than 

 by the horse. The ox is slower-footed, but he is more 

 enduring, more easily fed, and, from the structure of 

 his feet, capable of travelling along paths for which 

 the horse is not at all adapted as a beast of burden. 

 In all the hot countries, where, from the violence 

 with which the rains set in, and, generally speaking, 

 from the poverty of the people, roads cannot be made 

 and kept up in the same style as they are with us, 

 the genus bos, under some name or other, is tho 

 animal for the plough, the team, and the load ; nor 

 are there wanting some places where the same animal 

 is used for the saddle. 



Thus, in whatsoever point of view we consider this 

 genus, we find it interesting in the highest degree 

 so much so, that its history and the history of civili- 

 sation are so blended together, that we cannot study 

 the one properly, without studying the other along 

 with it. The same causes tend, however, to that 

 difficulty of separating the species in a satisfactory 

 manner, which has been noticed ; and thus render the 

 details of the history as unsatisfactory as the general 

 view of it is interesting. We treated of the true bisons 

 in a separate article ; however, it does not appear 

 that they have had much (if any) influence in civili- 

 sation. Their history in the eastern hemisphere is too 

 distant and dark for leading to any thing satisfactory ; 

 and though the American bisons were exceedingly 

 numerous on the first discovery of that animal, 

 and are still so in some parts of that country, it 

 does not appear that they ever led the natives to 

 settlement and culture, or were received by them in 

 any other light than that of prey for the hunter. 

 There are more species of the eastern continent, 

 principally, if not exclusively, of the central and 

 southern parts of Asia, in the eastern division of that 

 quarter, which are frequently classed with the bisons, 

 from some of their external characters (chiefly); but 

 these have not the locality or the appearance of the 

 true bisons ; and most, if not all of them, have been 

 in part at least, domesticated. These we shall, in 

 the very short notices which we are about to give, 



