52 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. I. 



nually imported for draught ; but the vast majority of 

 those in use are small arid 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 1763, lie saw in Ceylon two white 

 carry up about twenty bushels of oxen, each of which measured up- 

 rice to the hills, and bring down wards of eight feet high. They 

 from fifty to sixty bushels of coffee were sent as a present from the 

 to Colombo. King of Atchin. — Life and Ad- 



2 "Wolf says that, in the year ventures, p. 172. 



