6422 Notice of the various 



humped cattle are made to do in the southern limits of its range : at 

 least we have the evidence of Marco Polo to that effect. 



To return now to Europe, which may be regarded as the head- 

 quarters of the cylindric-horned humpless cattle,* and from which part 

 of the world they have been introduced into the Americas and Aus- 

 tralian colonies, to the exclusion of other domestic cattle, though 

 perhaps the finer breeds of humped cattle might be better suited to 

 the warmer and drier localities of those grand regions of the earth. 

 That is an experiment still worth trying. After the camel, the large 

 humped bullock is the animal of all others best adapted for Australian 

 or South African explorations. 



The establishment of Spanish cattle in America "dates from Colum- 

 bus's second voyage to St. Domingo. They there multiplied rapidly ; 

 and that island presently became a kind of nursery, from which these 

 animals were successively transported to various parts of the continental 

 coast, and from thence into the interior. Notwithstanding these 

 numerous exportations, in twenty-seven years after the discovery of 

 the island, herds of 4,000 head, as we learn from Oviedo, were not 

 uncommon, and there were even some that amounted to 8,000. 

 Acosta's report was 35,444 ; and in the same year there were exported 

 64,350 from the ports of New Spain. This was in the sixty-fifth year 

 after the taking of Mexico, previous to which event the Spaniards, 

 who came into that country, had not been able to engage in anything 

 but war." — c Quarterly Review,' vol. xxi. p. 335. 



Having noticed the rapid multiplication of Spanish cattle in the 

 New World, it occurs to us, as worthy of remark, that European cattle 

 do not thrive equally in India. Why should they not do so as well as 

 at Rio Janeiro ? Perhaps because the cattle of intertropical America 

 are derived from an ancestral stock inured and thoroughly acclimatized 

 to the torrid summers of Spain. And perhaps the same race of cattle, 

 if imported into India from Rio or the Bahamas, would take more 



* A round-about expression ; but we have positively no English word to designate 

 the species generally, — bull, cow, ox, bullock, steer, heifer, calf, &c, of which " beeve " 

 (analogous to the French bceuf) comes nearest to the mark, more so than cattle, but 

 will hardly apply till the beast is of an age to yield beef! "Black cattle" is most 

 absurd, seeing that they are of all colours ; and " horned cattle " equally so, as being 

 neither exclusive nor applying to the " polled " or hornless breeds. Sometimes, as in 

 the Dutch language, this animal is emphatically the " beast," as, in the feathered 

 class, the commonest of domestic birds is emphatically the " fowl ; " but has no proper 

 name in English, beyond such as are of more or less general application to all birds, 

 as cock, hen, chick, pullet, capon, &c. ; or sometimes emphatically "poultry,'' which 

 may be compared to " beeve." 



