116 THE WONDERS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



in their gait, acquire, by long use and exercise, such a great facility of drawing these carriages, that 

 there are few animals which can go at so rapid a rate." The majority of these oxen are very large, 

 and between the shoulders they have a great piece of flesh rising to the height of about six or eight 

 inches. 



In the country of Camandu, in Persia, the species of oxen are entirely white, with small horns on 

 their head, which, however, are not sharp at the point, and their hump is so large that great and 

 heavy burthens may be placed on it. When the natives load the animals, they bend their knees to 

 receive the load, like the camels, and rise at a given word of command. In Bengal they are trained 

 in the same manner ; the drivers of them never use a whip, but when they are sluggish or stubborn 

 they merely twist the tail of the animal, and they are so trained as to quicken their pace immediately 

 without any other kind of coercion. The regard which the natives of India have for these animals is 

 in some places so great, that it has degenerated into the most abject superstition. They consider that, 

 as the ox is the most useful of animals, it is the more deserving of their reverence, and they have not 

 only made it the object of their veneration, but they have converted it into an idol, or a kind of bene- 

 volent and powerful divinity. The dung of these animals forms also one of the most precious 

 unguents of the fair sex in India. Peyrard, in his Voyage to India, relates, " that the queen was 

 surrounded by the ladies of her court, and that the floor on which she had to tread, and the walls and 

 passages through which she had to pass, were all strewed with cows' dung." A free admission is given 

 to the animals to enter the palace of the king, and to roam at large through every apartment ; and 

 whenever the king or any of his nobles meet one of them, they make way for it with all the respect 

 and reverence due to a sacred object. A greater degree of veneration is paid to the cow than to either 

 the bull or the ox. 



The humpbacked oxen differ perhaps more than ours in the colour of their skin and the figure of 

 their horns. The colour of the subject of the present article is a grey, inclining to slate, intermixed 

 with hairs that are wholly white ; the under part of the belly, the dewlap, and the lower part of the 

 legs are white. There is, however, a species which are wholly white, and which are held in higher 

 estimation than those of any other colour, and it would appear that the bisons, or humpbacked oxen, 

 ought to be divided into two secondary races, the one very large and the other very small, in the latter 

 of which may be included the zebu. They are found under the same climate, and all possess equally 

 the same tractable and gentle disposition. The aspect of our present subject is mild and gentle in the 

 extreme ; nor in its general habits does it betray any tendency to ferocity. It has been generally be- 

 lieved that the hump on its back proceeded from the conformation of the spine and the bones of the 

 shoulders, but this has been found to be an error ; it is nothing more than a fleshy excrescence, a kind 

 of tumour, and equally as good to eat as the tongue. Some of these humps have been known to 

 weigh forty or fifty pounds, and in the south of Africa they are prized as a particular dainty. Another 

 striking characteristic of this animal is its slouching ears, which are completely pendent, and the general 

 conformation of its head fully entitles it to be considered as a species distinct from the common bison, 

 or our domestic ox. 



