BOS. 



561 



shaggy, will give some notion of the form and bearing 

 ing of these animals. 



Wild Bull. 



These animals are of much smaller size than what 

 may be considered their parent stock in the plains 

 of Tuscany ; but this, as well as their greater energy 

 of character, can be very readily accounted for from 

 their being exposed to the air all the year round in 

 a severer climate. Breeding " in and in" in an upland 

 district where the woods were thin and the pasture 

 bare would, in no very long time, reduce the largest 

 breed of cattle to the average stature of the natives, 

 if they could be kept alive and in health till the 

 change were brought about ; and it is well known 

 that with equal feeding, small and exposed cattle are 

 the most active and pugnacious. 



If the remarks which we have made on this sup- 

 posed original variety of the domestic ox are true, 

 and we trust we have carried along with us the 

 reader's conviction that they are, the peculiar man- 

 ners of the white cattle in those parts of Britain 

 where they are found become of no more value 

 there but as they show the change which one 

 variety of the species which has been long domes- 

 ticated in a climate remarkable for its mildness 

 undergoes, \\h*eu it is allowed to run wild in one 

 which is less favourable ; and really, all that we can 

 discover is so like what takes place with cattle of 

 any other colour, black, brindled, brown, or dun, 

 that it is not worth mentioning. The animal gets 

 smaller, more shaggy in the hair, and a little wilder 

 in disposition ; there the whole matter ends ; and 

 as the same thing happens not to all the varieties of 

 the common ox, but to the genus and (in a greater 

 or less degree, according to their susceptibilities to 

 climate.) to all animals, it teaches nothing. 



This however is not all, for the existence of any 

 such animal as the urns, whether white or black, within 

 the period of authenticated history that is, as a /ic- 

 ing animal within that period becomes exceedingly 

 problematical ; because, as we have already shown, 

 the black urns,, which is described as having been 

 seen (or heard of) in south-western Russia some 

 time by gone, if it had any real existence there at 

 all, is much more likely to have been a remnant of 

 domestic nature turned over to the wild state in the 

 course of human revolutions, than a fragment of wild 



NAT. HIST. VOL. I. 



nature which had survived there. As for the urtis 

 of earlier wastes, again, if we are to suppose it any 

 thing else than the ox become shaggy and violent in 

 an inhospitable climate, the most probable conjecture 

 is that it had been the bison the auracli, uarach 

 (he rough or shaggy animal. 



Thus in our attempts to trace the genealogy of the 

 domestic ox, even in those varieties with which we 

 are most familiar, to any wild animal in a state of 

 wild nature, we are forced from the living world to 

 the grand charnel-house, the earth ; for we might as 

 well attempt to trace the human inhabitants of any 

 particular part of the world, up to the present time, 

 without the assistance of any historic record, as to 

 trace to wild nature, an animal of which we know 

 nothing save in a state of domestication. In such an 

 inquiry, even unlettered man can give us no elue to 

 his history. Ask the native of Australia whence 

 came his ancestors, and how men who now know, of 

 their own invention, no other means of navigating the 

 waters than astride a log of timber, how their fathers 

 contrived to stem the dangerous tide of Torres' Strait, 

 to say nothing of the Indian Ocean or the Pacific, 

 and you will find that his knowledge of the matter 

 does not reach the time of his grandfather. Neither 

 will the external appearance, the manners, nor even 

 the language of those very rude tribes help us out. ; 

 for where thought and knowledge are limited to that 

 which is personally observed, there are as many 

 languages as there are families. Now, if this be the 

 case with man before the dawn of science who is, 

 notwithstanding, still man, and shows no lack of 

 capacity where he is placed under favourable circum- 

 stances, we cannot presume that it will be better in 

 the case of animals, which cannot, under any circum- 

 stances, be so educated, even to the smallest extent, 

 and of which the one generation cannot leave a single 

 iota of instruction to that which is to come after. 



As to the bones again, they are even more silent 

 in all manner of instruction ; and how the races which 

 were lost before the record of history began, may 

 have differed in habit from those which they resemble 

 in skeleton, or how the earth which is now their 

 pasture, may have differed from what it has been at 

 any known time, we are, and we must remain, com- 

 pletely in the dark. Therefore, though the history 

 of the domestic ox is, of all animal histories, the one 

 most desirable to be known, it is one of the most 

 difficult upon which to obtain any satisfactory infor- 

 mation. But it is fortunate that the difficulties with 

 which the progressive history is thus beset, do not in 

 the least stand in the way of our reaping the full 

 economical benefit of the animal. Indeed it is the 

 early domestication of the ox, and that plasticity to 

 climate and culture, that render him so valuable to 

 man, which are the chief, if not the sole cause of the 

 difficulty. We shall now notice some of the most 

 remarkable of the. Asiatic species or varieties ; but 

 to enumerate all, or even a slight approximation to 

 all, would be a very long, and not a very profitable 

 task. 



The general shape of the Brahminy bull, which is 

 the sacred bull in most parts of India, and especially 

 in the valley of the Ganges, may be understood from 

 the figure. In Benares, and those other cities which 

 are crowded with the more wealthy and devout Hin- 

 doos of high caste, these animals tire exceedingly 

 numerous, thronging the streets, and the courts, and 

 areas of the temples. They are fed to the utmost 

 U U 



