264 THE OX. 



from the interior. These waggons, though now much smaller 

 than those used by the earlier boors, are still very weighty 

 vehicles, drawn by teams of ten or twelve oxen. They are 

 usually driven by a Hottentot, who manages his enormous 

 team with perfect skill, and without the aid of reins. He 

 sits behind, holding in his hand a tremendous whip of plaited 

 thong, the handle of which is twelve or fourteen feet in 

 length. He uses it with ease, cracking it loudly over the 

 heads of the animals, and, when necessary, hitting an offend- 

 ing bullock : but his chief instrument of guidance is the 

 voice : he speaks to the animals by name, directing them to 

 the right or left, to stop or to quicken their pace, and enforc- 

 ing his commands, when necessary, by the stroke of his ter- 

 rible lash. When the team is large, a boy, usually a Hot- 

 tentot, leads the foremost oxen by a thong fastened about 

 their horns. 



But to turn from the Oxen of distant countries to those 

 whose economical uses are so important to the civilized na- 

 tions of Europe, we find that the animals, though agreeing 

 in certain common characters, yet very greatly differ in their 

 temperament, form, and uses, with the physical condition of 

 the countries in which they are reared, and the artificial treat- 

 ment to which they are subjected. It is upon the supplies of 

 food that the size of the animals seems mainly to depend. 

 Wherever food is supplied in abundance, the Ox becomes 

 enlarged in bulk ; and wherever food is deficient, whatever be 

 the nature of the climate, his size becomes less. The Ox of 

 Barbary is as diminutive as that of the Highlands of Scot- 

 land, because the grasses, his natural food, are burned up 

 during a great part of the year, leaving plants for him to 

 subsist upon as innutritious as the heaths of the northern 

 mountains. But where the grasses abound, and where the 

 heat of the climate is not sufficiently great to wither them 

 up during a great part of the year, the Ox assumes an entirely 

 different character with respect to magnitude and strength. 

 The largest Oxen in Europe are to be found extending west- 



