50 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. I. 



dark brown in colour, and very scantily provided with 

 hair. 



Oxen. — Oxen are used by the peasantry both in 

 ploughing and in tempering the mud in the wet paddi 

 fields before sowing the rice ; and when the harvest is 

 reaped they "tread out the corn/' after the imme- 

 morial custom of the East. The wealth of the native 

 chiefs and landed proprietors frequently consists in their 

 herds of bullocks, which they hire out to their depend- 

 ents during the seasons for agricultural labour ; and as 

 they already supply them with land to be tilled, and 

 lend the seed which is to crop it, the further contribu- 

 tion of this portion of the labour serves to render the 

 dependence of the peasantry on the chiefs and head- 

 men complete. 



The cows are often worked as well as the oxen ; and 

 as the calves are always permitted to suck them, milk 

 is an article which the traveller can rarely hope to pro- 

 cure in a Kandyan village. From their constant ex- 

 posure at all seasons, the cattle in Ceylon, both those 

 employed in agriculture and those on the roads, are 

 subject to devastating murrains, that sweep them away 

 by thousands. So frequent is the recurrence of these 

 calamities, and so extended their ravages, that they 

 exercise a serious influence upon the commercial in- 

 terests of the colony, by reducing the facilities of agri- 

 culture, and augmenting the cost of carriage during the 

 most critical periods of the coffee harvest. 



A similar disorder, probably peripneumonia, fre- 

 quently carries off the cattle in Assam and other hill 

 countries on the continent of India ; and there, as in 

 Ceylon, the inflammatory symptoms in the lungs and 

 throat, and the internal derangement and external 



