540 HISTORY or 



From all this it appears,' that naturalists have given various 

 names to animals in reality the same, and only differing in some 

 tew accidental circumstances. The wild cow and the tame, the 

 animal belonging to Europe, and that of Asia, Africa, and 

 America, the bonasus and the urus, the bison and the zebu, are 

 all one and the same, propagate among each other, and, in the 

 course of a few generations, the hump wears away, and scarcely 

 any vestiges of savage fierceness are found to remain. Of all 

 animals, therefore, except man alone, the cow seems most ex- 

 tensively propagated. Its nature seems equally capable of the 

 rigours of heat and cold. It is an inhabitant as well of the 

 frozen fields of Iceland, as the burning deserts of Libya. It 

 seems an ancient inmate in every climate, domestic and tame in 

 those countries which have been civilized, savage and wild in 

 the countries which are less peopled, but capable of being made 

 useful in all ; able to defend itself in a state of nature against 

 the most powerful enemy of the forest ; and only subordinate to 

 man, whose force it has experienced, and whose aid it at last 

 seems to require. However wild the calves are, which are 

 taken from the dam in a savage state, either in Africa or Asia, 

 they soon become humble, patient, and familiar ; and man may 

 be considered in those countries, as almost helpless without 

 their assistance. Other animals preserve their nature or their 

 form with inflexible perseverance ; but these, in every respect, 

 suit themselves to the appetites and conveniences of mankind j 

 and as their shapes are found to alter, so also does their nature ; 

 in no animal is there seen a greater variety of kinds, and in 

 none a more humble and pliant disposition.* 



surface ; horns first projecting- laterally from the sides of the head, then 

 curving downwards : they are placed on the skull at a considerable distance 

 anterior to the union of the facial and occipital surfaces. The specimen, 

 injured, and wanting the face and jaws, was found in Big.bonelick, near 

 the falls of Ohio. The affinity seems to be nearest to the Tartaric Yak. — See 

 the Animal Kingdom of Baron Cuvier. Supplement to the order Ruminan- 

 tia. By Major Smith. 



1 Buffon, vol. xxiii. p. 130. 

 • There is a musk-bull which inhabits the interior parts of North America, 

 on the west side of Hudson's Bay. It is in size equal to a Guernsey cow ; 

 the hair is brownish.black, occasionally marked with large white blots; it 

 grows to a very great lenptli, and is composed of a long and soft down, io- 

 termixed with straight hairs ; the summit of the head of the male is covered 

 oy the horns, which form a kind of scalp, in the female it is covered with 



