AMERICAN BISON. 
from the weight and compression of the bur- 
dens ; and a second may be found in tlie 
superior abundance of food, for it disappears 
when the animal is lean and ill fed. The en- 
slaved hunch-backed animals, having escaped 
ov been abandoned in the woods, have there 
produced a wild posterity, loaded with the 
same deformity ; which, far from disappear- 
ing, may have increased, by the abundance of 
vegetable food in every uncultivated country. 
On the whole, BuiFon concludes that, out of 
the Buffalo, the Bonasus, the Aurochs, the 
Bison, and the Zebn, to each of which both 
the ancient and modern naturalists have given 
a separate and distindl species, there remain, 
in fa6l:, only two; the Buffalo, and the Ox. 
These two animals, though greatly resem- 
bling each other, both in a domesticated state, 
and often living under the same roof, and fed 
rn the same meadow, when brought together, 
and even excited by their keepers, have con- 
stantly refused to engender. Their nature is 
more distant than that of the Ass from the 
Horse : there even appears to be a strong an- 
tipathy between them ; for it is affirmed, that a 
cow 
