256 THE OX. 



stretches all eastward through China, to Japan, and other 

 islands of the East. He gradually diminishes in numbers 

 beyond the Indus to the west, and in Persia gives entire 

 place to the common races. He is found, however, in Ara- 

 bia, having been probably carried thither from India. An 

 animal similar with respect to the possession of a dorsal 

 hump, but probably of African descent, is numerous in Abys- 

 sinia and Upper Egypt, extending along the eastern coasts 

 of Africa to the Island of Madagascar and the country of 

 the Caffres, and westwards from Abyssinia to the Niger. 



He was found in Syria before the Christian era, Aristotle 

 distinctly mentioning the humped oxen of Syria. It has been 

 observed as remarkable, that the Grecian sculptors gave a 

 dewlap to their oxen somewhat like that of Eastern countries. 

 No conclusion can be founded on this concidence, with respect 

 to the existence of this race in Greece. The description and 

 sculptures of the Greeks exhibit the common, and not the 

 Indian form. Dewlaps are largely developed in all races of 

 Oxen which approach the natural state ; and in copying the 

 wilder bulls of their own country, the sculptors of Greece had 

 sufficient examples of the graceful dewlap to guide them in 

 their ideal representations. In the figures of the Zodiac by 

 the Egyptians and Greeks, the form of the bull is always that 

 of the common races, and never of the Indian animal. On the 

 other hand, on the most ancient monuments of the East, as 

 those of Elephanta, all the memorials of whose origin are 

 hidden in the obscurity of the past, the representations of the 

 Ox always exhibit the Zebu form. From the remotest anti- 

 quity, therefore, the form of the Indian Zebu has remained 

 unchanged. Nay, some have believed that the Zebu is the 

 original type of the Ox, that the warmer regions of the East 

 are the native country of the race, and that it is only as he 

 is removed from these that he assumes the ordinary form. 

 It is more natural to believe that the Indian Ox is distinct 

 in the natural state. 



The Zebu differs greatly in size in different parts of Hin- 



10 



