•_'1C THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



"the wild cows and oxen .... which are to be met with in Carolina and 

 other provinces to the south of Pennsylvania." had been obtained by "several 

 people of distinction," who " brought them up among the tame cattle." 

 "When grown up," he adds, "they were perfectly tame, but at the same 

 time very unruly, so that there was no enclosure strong enough to resist 

 them if they had a mind to break through it; for as they possess a 

 great strength in their neck, it was easy for them to overthrow the pales 

 with their horns, and to get into the cornfields; and as soon as they had 

 made a road, all the tame cattle followed them; they likewise copulated 

 with the latter, and by that means generated, as it were, a new breed."* 



Bernard Romans also says (writing a century ago), "The bounteous hand 

 of nature has here given us an animal which, by experience, we know may 

 easily lie domesticated, whose line wooll might yield good profit, and whose 

 flesh is equal at least to our beef, and yields as much tallow; i mean the 

 buffaloe." t 



Gallatin also says that they were not only domesticated in Virginia, hut 

 that they were bred with domestic cattle, and that the mixed breed was 

 fertile. "As doubts have lately been raised upon that point," he says, writ- 

 ing forty years ago, •• 1 must say that the mixed breed was quite common 

 fifty [now ninety] years ago, in some of the northwestern counties of Vir- 

 ginia : and that the cows, the issue of that mixture, propagated like all 

 others. No attempt that I know of was ever made by the inhabitants to 

 tame a buffalo of full growth. But calves were occasionally caught by the 

 nid broughl alive into the settlements. A hull thus raised was for a 

 number of years owned in my immediate vicinity by a farmer living on the 



M mgahela, adjoining Mason ami Dixon's line. lie was permitted to roam 



at large, and was no more dangerous to man than any bull of the common 

 speciea Bui to them lie was formidable, ami would not Buffer any to ap- 

 proach within two or three miles of his own range. Most of the cow- I 

 knew were descended from him. For want of a fresh supply of the wild 

 animal they have now merged into the common kind. They were no favor- 

 they \ ielded less milk. The superior Bize ami strength of the buffalo 

 might bave improved the breed of oxen for draft, buf this was not attended 

 to, horses being almost exclusively employed in that quarter for agricultural 



: 1 1 n.i- in North America (Foroter's translation), Vol I p 168 



t \.n II l.,i and W.il lorida, p. 174 



