EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



guages, and here we have Gr. ovs, Lat. bos> 

 Irish bo, and Welsh bu. The meaning of the 

 word has been variously explained, but, as we 

 have beside it the Skr. gu, Gr. yocteo and )8oaw, 

 Lat. boaoy to " bellow," it is most likely an im- 

 itative sound, like our moo and mooley. In the 

 dialect of the Vedas a bull is called vaksha^ in 

 later Skr. and Zend uksha ; in Gothic this ap- 

 pears as auhsa, and in Old Eng. as oxa y whence 

 our ox. Sthira^ again, is a Skr. name for bull, 

 meaning the " powerful " animal. In Zend 

 tfaora means a strong beast of burden ; in Eng- 

 lish we have kept the full word sfeer, but the 

 initial s has generally been dropped, so that we 

 have Dan. tyr, Gr. and Lat. taurus y Russ. turu, 

 Irish tor. The word bull itself is descriptive of 

 the strength of the animal, and appears in Skr. 

 baling Irish bulan, Lith. bullus, and in many 

 other languages. There are a great many other 

 Aryan names for these animals, but without 

 spending time on them we may note that several 

 of the words just cited have been borrowed by 

 non-Aryan languages, such as those of the 

 Finno-Tataric class, and even the Japanese and 

 Chinese ; from which it would seem probable 

 either that the primitive Aryans were the first 

 to domesticate cattle, or at least that they were 

 very preeminent as a pastoral race, and furnished 

 to their neighbours great numbers of these most 

 useful animals. The prominence of the cow 

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