BOS. 



563 



over a, very great extent of country both in latitude 

 and in longitude. For the reasons which have been 

 already stated, there is no possibility of exploring their 

 progressive history and progressive geographical 

 distribution in any thing- like a satisfactory manner. 

 But, so far as we can judge, mankind do not appear 

 to have made any even very moderate advance in 

 civilisation without pressing one variety or oilier of 

 the genus into their service ; and, therefore, we may 

 expect to find traces of them wherever improvement 

 has at any time been, whatever may be the condition 

 of the place and the people now. If we are to take 

 their central locality, or what we may designate their 

 original head-quarters, somewhere about the north or 

 north-west of India, where also there are more of the 

 cultivated plants which are common to all civilised 

 nations found in the wild state than perhaps at any 

 other spot on the earth's surface, we should say that 

 they have extended northward both in Asia and in 

 Europe to the confines of the polar regions to those 

 places which once were perhaps the favourite abodes 

 of the larger bisons, and of the northern elephant of 

 a still earlier time. They have extended westward 

 to the Atlantic both in Europe and in Northern 

 Africa ; and they have been carried by later adven- 

 turers across that ocean, till they have stocked both 

 the northern and the southern part of that continent 

 with more valuable animals certainly than any which 

 it contained when the knowledge of it was first added 

 to eastern geography. They have extended south- 

 ward into Central Africa ; and in Asia they have 

 reached the larger islands which lie most contiguous 

 to the shores of its middle and its eastern peninsula. 

 But it is doubtful whether they reached those places 

 during the time that they were wholly in the posses- 

 sion of that dark race who are called the " Oceanic 

 Negroes;" and even the Malays do not appear to 

 have carried them on their distant voyages ; for there 

 is no trace of them in the remoter isles of the Great 

 South Sea ; neither were they known in Australia, 

 till it became an object of European settlement. 



In the present state of the world there is not per- 

 haps any one of the species or varieties, which are 

 more properly designated oxen, to be found wholly 

 in a state of nature, and not to some extent, or in 

 some way under the dominion of man. In proportion 

 as those which more clearly appear to be of the same 

 stock, whether that stock is to be considered as the 

 production of natural circumstances wholly, or more 

 or les* modified by culture, have been the more rea- 

 dily spread over different climates, and among people 

 of different habits, they are found to differ the most 

 in the individuals, both in colour and in all their 

 other external appearances ; and in proportion as 

 any one species or variety is more confined in its 

 locality, or has the locality over which it ranges more 

 uniform, whether in its own physical circumstances, 

 or in the habits and degree of civilisation of its people, 

 we uniformly find that all the individuals are the 

 more constant to one general type. But their cha- 

 racteristic history is as extensive as their uses to man 

 are valuable, so. that we must leave them, with what- 

 ever reluctance, and briefly notice the section which 

 contains the buffaloes properly so called. 



The Buffalo section. The animals which form this 

 section, though they have the general characters of 

 the genus bos, have a considerable number of points 

 of distinction ; and they belong to a different geo- 

 graphical position. They are animals of the eastern 



continent only, and though, in what may be considered 

 as the central zone of the genus, they are found both 

 wild and domesticated, yet they do not reach the 

 northern part, and in Africa they are found farther to 

 the south than any of the others ; and there are 

 native species in those countries toward the farther 

 extremity of that continent which the ox had never 

 reached till carried there by European settlers. The 

 three sections may thus be considered as, in their 

 native distribution, lying in parallel belts along a 

 zone stretching from north-east to south-west, the 

 bison and the domestic ox being on the north side of 

 the desert, and the buffalo on the south, though the' 

 localities of the ox and the buffalo mingle with each 

 other on the banks of the great rivers by which the 

 continuity of the desert is broken, as the Ganges, the 

 Indus, the Euphrates and Tigris, and the Nile. 



Domestication has, however, carried the ox into 

 every place where the buffalo is to be met with, and 

 even beyond it to the south in some places ; and 

 though the domesticated buffalo has been in fact 

 carried into places which may more properly be con- 

 sidered as the localities of the ox, yet the interference 

 in this way has not been nearly so great as in the 

 other. This is easily accounted for, both from the 

 haunts of the buffalo in a state of nature and from its 

 disposition and habits, which render it far less fit for 

 domestication than the ox. There is a slight approxi- 

 mation to the buffalo, both in haunt and in appear- 

 ance, in some of those species or varieties which are 

 oxen in their principal characters, and those ate the 

 varieties of ox found nearest the localities of the 

 buffalo. The gayal, for instance, h^s a heavy and 

 buffalo-like appearance, though it is not so expressive 

 of .strength as the latter animal. Now we mentioned 

 that the favourite country of the gayal is the lower 

 slopes of the Himalaya, toward the Indian side, and 

 especially in the lower parts of the valley of the 

 Ganges, in which places there is a most abundant 

 vegetation, as the mountains pour forth innumerable 

 springs which irrigate those places and keep them hi 

 a state of vigorous vegetation, at those times when 

 the level plains in the same latitude are completely 

 burnt up. 



The gayals come to the border of the marsh in 

 these places ; the buffaloes enter it, and feed upon a 

 much more rank and coarse herbage than any others 

 of the genus bos. They eat the luxuriant but rough 

 grasses with which the permanently humid spots in 

 such a climate are always covered ; and they seldom 

 quit these naturally, even for those pastures which, 

 during the rains, afford much more succulent food 

 for grazing animals. 



Though different in all essential respects as animals, 

 the buffaloes and the elephants are neighbours, and 

 often co-dwellers on the same grounds ; and this 

 holds in Southern Africa as well as in the lower 

 valley of the Ganges, and along the banks of the 

 other rivers to the east which discharge their waters 

 into it, or into the Bay of Bengal. All animals are 

 in part modified by the physical circumstances of the 

 places where they reside ; and however they may 

 differ in genus, or any other division into which ani- 

 mals can be formed, if they feed on the same pastures, 

 they acquire a sort of community of manners which 

 mark them as the animals of that peculiar place rather 

 than of any other. 



This is so very general, especially in the mammalia, 

 which, being- more the tenants of the earth's surface 

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