52 
MAMMALIA. 
[Chap. I. 
nually imported for draught ; but the vast majority of 
those in use are small and dark-coloured, with a grace- 
ful head and neck, and elevated hump, a deep silky 
dewlap, and limbs as slender as a deer. They appear 
to have neither the strength nor weight requisite for 
this service ; and yet the entire coffee crop of Ceylon, 
amounting annually to upwards of half a million hun- 
dred weight, is year after year brought down from the 
mountains to the coast by these indefatigable little 
creatures, which, on returning, carry up proportionally 
heavy loads of rice and implements for the estates. 1 
There are two varieties of the native bullock ; one a 
somewhat coarser animal, of a deep red colour ; the 
other, the high-bred black one I have just described. So 
rare was a white one of this species, under the native 
kings, that the Kandyans were compelled to set them 
apart for the royal herd. 2 
Although bullocks may be said to be the only animals 
of draught and burden in Ceylon (horses being rarely 
used except in spring carriages), no attempt has been 
made to improve the breed, or even to better the con- 
dition and treatment of those in use. Their food is in- 
different, pasture in all parts of the island being rare, 
and cattle are seldom housed under any vicissitudes of 
weather. 
The labour for which they are best adapted, and in 
which, before the opening of roads, these cattle were 
formerly employed, is in traversing the jungle paths of 
1 A pair of these little bullocks 
carry up about twenty bushels of 
rice to the hills, and bring down 
from fifty to sixty bushels of coffee 
to Colombo. 
2 "Wolf says that, in the year 
1763; he saw in Ceylon two white 
oxen, each of which measured up- 
wards of eight feet high. They 
were sent as a present from the 
King of Atehin. — Life and Ad- 
ventures, p. 172. 
