142 WILD TRAITS IN TAME ANIMALS. 



could escape from such a contest without dan- 

 gerous wounds. In bovine society, although 

 the practice of duelling has not been so rigidly 

 discountenanced as among our civilised selves, 

 private contests have been reduced to a com- 

 paratively harmless form, similar to that now 

 prevailing among French journalists and Ger- 

 man students — where, by the way, one sees the 

 same conservative law at work which has been 

 unconsciously operating for many centuries in 

 the wider realm of nature. 



Again, in all probability an adult bull would 

 not stand in much danger from any of the 

 ordinary foes which threaten wild cattle. We 

 find, wherever horned stock have run wild, 

 whether in the Ladrone Islands, in America, 

 or in Australia, the bull constitutes himself 

 without difficulty as the supreme lord of his 

 district. None ventures to attack him in the 

 open except the hunter with his deadly fire- 

 arms. Hence the wild bull would have but 

 little need of the means to repel the attacks of 

 the Carnivora. One finds that wolves make a 

 special aim at capturing the young and help- 

 less members of a herd. Hence in the ereat 

 majority of cases when their onslaught had to 



