404 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



encompass a herd by firing the grass, when a number are 

 destroyed without difficulty. In the northern parts they 

 drive them into a kind of staked avenues, or keddah, while 

 the snow is on the ground, and kill them from a tree in 

 the centre of the recess, and from around it: they make 

 cloaks, fyc, of the hides. The Buffalo dance is one of the 

 principal ceremonies of the year among many tribes. It 

 takes place before the hunting season of the Bison, and 

 has been fully described by Pennant. 



The Yak. (B. Poephagus.) This animal was originally 

 noticed by iElian under the above name, and since described 

 by Pallas, who preferred as a specific designation grunniens 

 or grunting ; but it should rather be groaning, as its voice 

 has no similarity with the grunt of a hog. The Yak 

 bears some resemblance to a buffalo in the form of the 

 head ; but it is shorter, more convex, and thicker about the 

 muzzle ; the ears are wide, horizontal ; the eyes large ; the 

 muzzle itself small, and the nostrils almost transverse ; 

 the lips tumid ; the forehead rather flat ; the top of the 

 head convex between the ears, and covered with frizzled 

 woolly hair ; the neck of the male thick ; the withers ele- 

 vated, but not hunched ; the mammae placed in a trans- 

 verse line, and the body furnished with fourteen pair of 

 ribs. The hair of the forehead whirls, and is close ; that 

 on the neck, back, and sides, is long, woolly, pendent in 

 winter, and upon high mountains, but shorter on the sides 

 in summer, and in low warm situations. From the shoul- 

 ders along the spine, there is a streak of hair generally 

 grayish, and turned forwards ; the tail more furnished with 

 long and finer hairs than in the Horse, reaches to the heels. 

 The stature of the animal varies, the smaller being only 

 seven feet long, and three feet ten inches at the shoulder ; 

 but there are larger varieties, the tail of one in the British 

 Museum measuring six feet in length. The horns are 

 round, smooth, pointed, lateral, bending forward and up- 



