INTRODUCTION OF DOMESTIC QUADRUPEDS. 
83 
from Asia Minor to the Northern shores of the Black Sea, by 
the Goths, in the third or fourth century.* The Arabian 
single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been carried to the 
Canary Islands, partially introduced into Australia, Greece, 
Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to little purpose 
in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American Govern¬ 
ment into Texas and New Mexico, where it finds the climate 
and the vegetable products best suited to its wants, and prom¬ 
ises to become a very useful agent in the promotion of the 
special civilization for which those regions are adapted. 
America had no domestic quadruped but a species of dog, the 
lama tribe, and, to a certain extent, the bison or buffalo.f Of 
course, it owes the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the goat, 
and the swine, as does also Australia, to European coloniza¬ 
tion. Modern Europe has, thus far, not accomplished much 
in the way of importation of new animals, though some inter¬ 
esting essays have been made. The reindeer was successfully 
introduced into Iceland about a century ago, while similar 
attempts failed, about the same time, in Scotland. The Cash- 
mere or Thibet goat was brought to France a generation since, 
and succeeds well. The same or an allied species and the 
Asiatic buffalo were carried to South Carolina about the year 
1850, and the former, at least, is thought likely to prove of 
permanent value in the United States. The yak, or Tartary ox, 
seems to thrive in France, and success has attended the recent 
efforts to introduce the South American alpaca into Europe. 
* ErdTcunde , viii, Asien , 1 ste Abtheilung , pp. 660, 758. 
f See chapter iii, post; also Humboldt, AnsicJiten der Natur , i, p. 71. 
From the anatomical character of the bones of the urus, or anerochs, 
found among the relics of the lacustrine population of ancient Switzerland, 
and from other circumstances, it is inferred that this animal had been do¬ 
mesticated by that people ; and it is stated, I know not upon what author¬ 
ity, in Le Alpi c?ie cingono VItalia, that it had been tamed by the Yeneti 
also. See Ltell, Antiquity of Man, pp. 24, 25, and the last-named work, 
p. 489. This is a fact of much interest, because it is, I believe, the only 
known instance of the extinction of a domestic quadruped, and the extreme 
improbability of such an event gives some countenance to the theory of 
the identity of the domestic ox with, and ivs descent from, the urus. 
