322 APPENDIX C 



Yak or Woolly Ox (Bos grunniens, Linn.) has been formed by 

 Nature for the northern ranges and has long been domesticated 

 by man, so that the work of adapting and subduing it is already 

 done. 



Many authorities, 1 such as Prejevalsky, Kinloch, Blandford, 

 Nott, Hooker, de Montigny, Hue, Smyth, etc., have written about 

 the Yak, describing its many excellencies and asking why it has 

 not been used in Europe. No one seems to have answered the 

 question, and I venture to suggest it has not been used in Europe 

 because there it offers no great advantages over the common cat- 

 tle, cattle-ranching not being in vogue there. But in America, as 

 we have seen, the differing conditions set a different value on 

 the Yak. 



Its native haunts are the snow-clad rocky hillsides and bare 

 mountains of Thibet, even up to 20,000 feet above the sea, going 

 higher, as some think, than any other animal. But experiments 

 show that it thrives equally well near sea-level, as at Shanghai, 

 Nice, Paris, Antwerp, and Woburn Park in England, as well as 

 in the London Zoological Gardens. 



Its native food is a coarse wiry grass (whence one of its 

 names, poephagus, or grass-eater), but the experiments at Woburn 

 Abbey, and at the London Zoo show that it will eat anything 

 that common cattle will eat, and that it thrives equally well 

 on stuff that in the barnyard would be thought very poor fodder 

 indeed. 



In size the Yak resembles common cattle. Prejevalsky says 

 the bulls are five to six feet high at the shoulder and weigh 1,000 

 to 1,200 pounds, but the accounts of various other authors would 

 suggest a much greater weight. In build it is like a common ox 

 with the hump of a Bison, but the distinguishing feature of this 

 cold-ranger is its coat. On the upper parts generally it is three or 

 four inches long and but little thicker than that of a well-furred 

 Highland bull, but it lengthens on the sides, till the throat, shoul- 

 ders, belly, and hams are covered with a dense hairy fringe that 



1 To these and the Duke of Bedford I am largely indebted for the 

 information herein set forth. 



