MIXED CEOP OF UNirOBM AQK. 35 



off other intermixed species. Thus, for instance, in tracts of Hard- 

 wickia hinata that species, bringing out, as it does, its new flush of 

 leaves in April, is the only plant that yields green fodder in the 

 parched hot season and its leaves are then greedily devoured by 

 cattle; but during the rains, when there is an abundance of other and 

 more congenial food, cattle, as they graze along, will generally care- 

 fully avoid Hardwickia seedlings. This also explains the general 

 immunity of sal from injury by cattle. On the other hand, cattle 

 may acquire a tutored taste for certain kinds of fodder, which they 

 would under ordinary circumstances eschew. Thus calves in Nimar 

 in Central India are often taught to feed by having bunches of teak 

 leaves, conspicuous by their size, hung up in front of them; and when 

 they grow up, they continue to relish teak leaves, buffaloes having 

 often been known to bend down with their bodies saplings and small 

 poles of that species in order to get at the leaves. 



A few words may be said here regarding the relative destructive- 

 ness of our common domestic herbivorous quadrupeds. The least 

 harmful of all are those of the equiije class (horses, asses and mules) ; 

 they possess incisors in both jaws and hence bite off clean, and 

 their undivided hoof rather treads the soil hard than cuts it up. The 

 rest, the pig excepted, have incisors only in one jaw, so that they do 

 not bite, but tear and wrench off; seedlings possessing short roots or 

 growing in soft soil are Hable to be plucked out bodily by the roots. 

 All of them, except camels, have cloven hoofs, the sharp moveable 

 segments of which cut up the sgil on slopes. In this respect goats 

 and sheep are most to be feared, since th ey can frequent the steep- 

 est ground, and of the two goats are the more dangerous on 

 account of their very much more active habits, their marked bark- 

 eating propensities and their standing up to leaves and shoots several 

 feet high, which they pull or bend down to themselves. The weight 

 of the buffalo and his innate sluggishness, which leads him to prefer 

 crashing through a bush to moving to one side in order to avoid it, 

 renders him more objectionable than the cow. Pigs, being grub- 

 bing animals, besides killing outright young plants of species they 

 eat, break and expose the roots of a great many others ; but they 

 are also usefid in that they loosen the soil, triturate and mix up with 

 the mineral soil the undecpmposed upper layer of vegetable detritus 

 and destroy rats and insects. Camels are dangerous on account of 

 their great reach and the manner in which, besides biting off the 

 ends of branches, they strip them of their leaves by seizing them low 

 down and with a continuous tug drawing their whole length through, 

 their mouths. Arranged in descending order of desttuctiveness we 



