ORDER RUMINANT1A. 379 



were already familiarized with it as early as the time of 

 the first Caesars. Now the Bubalis of Aristotle must have 

 been a rare animal, which certainly bore no such Greek 

 name in its native regions of Central Africa; and therefore 

 the word itself originated, and became common in some 

 other manner. The learned among the ancients, were as 

 liable to misapply appellations of strange animals as the 

 moderns, and the Arachosian Oxen of Aristotle, may have 

 been known to the Greek soldiers of Alexander by another 

 designation; indeed, by the name which, it appears, the 

 Buffalo bore among the northern nations of Central Asia, 

 from the earliest periods, a name which, although it has 

 the sound of a Greek compound, is nevertheless of genuine 

 Touranian origin. It is composed of the syllable Bu, Ox, 

 and joined to a distinctive epithet. Taking the Tartaric 

 to be the root, we find that nearly all the dialects of ancient 

 Turan, Cheen, and the posterior Sclavonic, designate both 

 the Buffalo and Bull by the words, Busan, Tartaric, Buka, 

 Busum, Buja, Buha, Bucha, Buga, Bujau, Kukan. Buwol 

 is the modern Russian, Bawol the Polish, Buwal Bohe- 

 mian, and Bial, the Hungarian *. In most of the countries 

 where the above dialects are spoken, the Buffalo is nearly 

 as common as the Domestic Ox, and, moreover, some of 

 these dialects were spoken by the very nations who intro- 

 duced the animal into Western Asia, Africa, and Europe. 

 It will hardly be asserted that the invaders forgot their 

 own name of a domestic animal, peculiar to themselves, to 

 learn a Greek one which belonged to another; or, that 

 this scientific name, which was not even accepted at Athens 

 or Rome, should have found its way into the heart of Asia, 

 where Greece with its language was not heard of. The 



* This list might be considerably lengthened : Bubaa is even an 

 Hottentot name of the Common Ox. Bucharia seems to have its 

 name from the Buffalo. 



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