410 
THE BRITISH OX. 
Cattle are, like most other animals, the creatures of education 
and circumstances. We educate them to give us milk, and to 
acquire^ flesh and fat. There is not much intelligence required 
for that. It is with him as with all our other domesticated de¬ 
pendents : when he has lost the wild freedom of the forest, and 
become the slave of man, without acquiring the privilege of being 
his friend or receiving instruction from him, instinct languishes, 
without being replaced by the semblance of reason. But when 
we press him into our immediate service,—when he draws our 
cart and ploughs our land,—he rapidly improves upon us; he is, 
in fact, altogether a different animal: when he receives a kind 
of culture at our hands, he seems to be enlightened with a ray of 
human reason, and warmed with a degree of human affection. 
The Lancashire and the Devonshire ox seem not to belong to the 
same genus. The one has just wit enough to find his way to 
and from his pasture; the other rivals the horse in activity and 
docility, and often fairly beats him out of the field in stoutness 
and honesty in work. He is as easily broken in, and he equals 
him in attachment and gratitude to his feeder. 
It is, however, in other countries, where the services of the ox 
are more extensive, and his education more complete, that we 
are to look for that development of intellect that his sluggish 
nature would scarcely promise here. Burchell, in the 1st vol. of 
his Travels into the Interior of Africa, p. 128, says:— 
“ These oxen are generally broken in for riding when they are 
not more than a year old. The first ceremony is that of piercing 
their nose to receive the bridle; for which purpose they are thrown 
on their back, and a slit is made through the septum, or cartilage 
between the nostrils, large enough to admit a finger. In this 
hole is thrust a strong stick stripped of its bark, and having at 
one end a forked bunch, to prevent it passing through. To each 
end of it is fastened a thong of hide, of a length sufficient to 
reach round the neck and form the reins; and a sheep-skin, 
with the wool on, placed across the back, together with another 
folded up, and bound on with a rein long enough to pass several 
times round the body, constitutes the saddle. To this is some¬ 
times added a pair of stirrups, consisting only of a thong with a 
loop at each end slung across the saddle. Frequently the loops 
