THE HORNED ANIMALS— DOMESTIC OXEN. 



479 



white mark on the buttocks may be considered the 

 most conspicuous distinctive feature; the lower half 

 of the legs and the upper surface of the tips of the 

 ears arc also white. 

 The Habitat, Range The Banteng is a native of Java, 



and Habits of Borneo and the eastern portion of 

 the Banteng. Sumatra; but it also inhabits por- 

 tions of the Asiatic continent, namely, the Malay 

 Peninsula, Tenasserim and Pegu, and probably also 

 Burmah. It delights in damp or marshy woodland, 

 in watery situations in general, low lying valleys 

 traversed by slowly flowing rivers being more to its 

 taste than any other kinds of forest country. 



The retiring yet courageous disposition of this 

 wild Ox renders its pursuit both perilous and diffi- 

 cult. It is true that it generally flees on perceiving 

 an approaching human be- 

 ing, but if brought to bay 

 and wounded, it exhibits 

 little fear of the sportsman, 

 not infrequently turning on 

 him and using its pointed 

 horns with great skill and 

 effect. 



Adult Bantengs cannot 

 be tamed, but calves may 

 become completely domes- 

 ticated, as the temper of 

 this animal seems to be 

 more tractable and respon- 

 sive to kindness than that 

 of any other known spe- 

 cies of wild Oxen. 



DOMESTIC OXEN. 



None of the Oxen that 

 have so far been described 

 have probably had any 

 part, or at the most only a 

 small one, in the produc- 

 tion of our domestic Cattle. 

 The darkness beclouding 

 the origin of these ex- 

 tremely useful creatures, 

 which have been subject to 

 Man from the earliest ages, 

 does not seem so dense as 

 that which conceals from 

 view the history of the 

 descent of other domestic 

 animals; yet a decision on 

 the subject is no less diffi- 

 cult in this case than in 

 that of any of the others. 



Authorities nearly all agree that the origin of Oxen 

 won to domesticity at nearly the same time in all 

 three continents of the Old World must be traced 

 not to one but to several different primary species. 

 Which were these original species, however, not 

 even the boldest conjectures, based on the skeletons 

 of extinct animals, can suffice to approximately de- 

 termine. As has been seen from the preceding de- 

 scriptions, several different kinds of wild Oxen are 

 even at the present day being trained and won to 

 domesticity, or at least used to improve existing 

 domestic breeds; but the period at which Man first 

 mastered the wild Ox or, as is more probable, formed 

 a herd of its offspring taken young, lies outside the 

 pale of all history and tradition. The earliest leg- 

 ends mention herds of tame Cattle; on the oldest 

 monuments of the countries which we consider the 



nurseries of civilization we find the effigies of domes- 

 tic Cattle; we dig their anatomical remains out of 

 the alluvial soil around the former sites of lacustrine 

 dwellings. Not without warrant do we lay special 

 stress on the importance of these relics; but the 

 most careful examination of them sheds as little 

 light on this (in more than one respect) mysterious 

 question, as docs the comparison of the ancient 

 monumental images with the breeds of Cattle of 

 to-day, and by no means solves the mystery of their 

 ancestry. 



The ancient animal pictures of the Egyptian mon- 

 uments are drawn with great skill and show us dis- 

 tinctly three breeds of Cattle: first, a long-horned 

 variety, the most common breed, which had the 

 great honor of furnishing the sacred bull, Apis; sec- 



THE SANGA. This Abyssinian variety of domestic Ox has a well developed hump and long and pecul- 

 iarly shaped horns, but is otherwise a well shaped animal. Its limbs and tail are long. In habits it does not differ 

 from other domestic Cattle. {Bos a/ticanus.) 



ondly, a short-horned breed, quite similar to the 

 former, but with short horns describing a curve of 

 a quarter of a circle; and thirdly, humped Oxen, 

 usually represented among the tribute brought to 

 the Egyptian rulers by the tribes of the Soudan. 



The delineation of the anatomical structure of the 

 head in all these representations shows features 

 having a close resemblance to those of a Zebu head. 

 The humped Ox, which is even at the present day 

 distributed all over central Africa, is the progenitor 

 of both the ancient and modern strains of Egyptian 

 domestic Cattle, which are and have always been of 

 the humped breeds. If one travels from Lower 

 P^gypt up the Nile, through Nubia and Dongola to 

 Sennaar, he can but observe how the high-necked 

 Egyptian domestic Ox is gradually superseded by 

 the genuine humped Ox of central Africa. The 



