The Ox - Breeds of the British Isles (Domesticated Animals of the British Islands)

BREED.

SHORT-HORNED BULL.

III. THE OX.

The important family of which the common Ox may be regarded as typical, divides itself into three groups,—the BISONTINE, the BUBALINE, and the TAURINE. The Bisons inhabit both the Old and New Continents, and are distinguished by round smooth horns, and a musky odour which exhales from the skin. The Buffaloes are characterized by angular horns, and a fainter odour of musk, and are natives of the warmer regions of Asia and Africa. The Taurine group, comprehending the common Ox and its different races, forms the most important division of Bovidæ.

The EUROPEAN BISON, Bison Europæusof the Greeks, the Bison of the Latins, the Wisent of the Older Germans, the Zubr of the Poles, and the Zub of the Arabians. He formerly abounded in the Hercynian and Sarmatian forests, and was regarded as the largest of the quadrupeds indigenous to Europe. But, like many animal species, the great Bison of Europe seems doomed to perish under a condition of countries that is no longer suited to him. He merely lingers in a portion of the vast regions of forest which he once inhabited. He is found in herds in the marshy forest of Bialowieza in Poland, where he is protected by the Government of Russia. He does not wander beyond the woods where he yet lingers, because it is probable the sustenance which suits him is not to be found in another habitat; and even in this retreat, he would probably cease to exist, were it not for the care used in supplying him with food during the snows of winter.

Bisons are still found in considerable herds in the woods of the Caucasus. According to the recent travels of Nord-man, they exist in the greatest numbers from the Kuban to the Psib. In some places they inhabit the mountains in summer; in others, they are met with in swampy places all the year round. They are killed by the natives, and their horns, formed into drinking cups, are used by the wild chieftains of the country. A large kind of Bison is likewise found in British India; but whether it is identical with the Bisons of Western Asia and Europe, or a distinct species, has not been determined. It is termed Gaur by the natives, and by some naturalists Bos gaurus. It has been hitherto found in the thick jungles in the western confines of the provinces of Bengal and Bahar. It is often killed by British sportsmen, but of the young none has yet been captured. The villagers have a superstitious terror of these creatures, and cannot be persuaded to go in search of the calves; believing that, if the Gaurs are in any way molested, they will attack the persons disturbing them, and never quit them till they have put them to death.

The European Bison is a large animal, equalling in stature the tallest of the domestic oxen of the countries he inhabits. His head is broad, and the forehead bulging; the horns are round, thick, black, and of a hard consistence, and larger in the male than in the female: the eye is small, and its usual character is placid; but when the animal is roused to anger, the pupil narrows to a slit, the coat becomes inflamed, and all the expression indicates blind fury and madness. The tongue is covered with tubercles, and, together with the lips, gums, and palate, is blue. The trunk and hinder parts of the body are relatively slender, the shoulders thick, and in the adult male the spines are so lengthened as to form withers. The skin is exceedingly thick, and emits the odour of musk. The trunk, down to the knees, is covered with woolly hair, the top of the head, neck, and shoulder, with long hair mixed with frizzled wool, forming a mane, and from the chine to the chest is a kind of beard. The tail comes below the hocks, and at its extremity is furnished with a brush of long bristly hairs. The female has smaller horns than the male, and less elevated withers. Though a large animal, she has an udder smaller than that of the least of the domestic Cows.

These creatures are ferocious, strong, and fearless of enemies. They hold their heads low, are swift of foot, but are soon worn out, seldom running farther than one or two English miles. They swim with facility, and delight to cool themselves in water. Their favourite places of resort are thickets near the swampy banks of rivers. In the warmer season they frequent shadowy spots; in winter they keep quiet during the day, in the thickets of firs and pines, browsing only at night, and finding sustenance on the bark of young trees. The thrusts of an old bull will overturn trees of five or six inches diameter. An old bull, we are informed, is a match for four wolves, though packs of the latter animal will hunt down a full-grown bull when alone.*

Like all the Bovine race in a state of nature, they avoid the dangerous approach of man. When suddenly come upon, they rush upon the intruder with fury. When taken young, they become used to their keepers, but resent the intrusion of strangers, and seem incapable of resigning their natural wildness, and submitting to domestication. They abhor the domestic races, shunning them, or goring them to death. Four young ones, captured in the forest of Bialowieza, afforded to M. Gilbert, who had long resided in Poland, opportunities of observing their habits. They refused to take the milk of the cow, but at length submitted to be suckled by a she-goat, raised on a table to the level of their muzzles. When satisfied, they sometimes tossed the nurse and the table to the distance of several feet. The two males died within a month. The females survived: they became docile and obedient to their keeper, licking his hands, rubbing his body gently with their heads and muzzles, and coming to him when they heard his voice. They hated the sight of scarlet, and drove all the common cows from their pastures. They came into season at the age of two years, and rejected the approaches of the domestic bull.

The forest in which these creatures are preserved, contains about 352 geographical square miles, of which about one-sixth part consists of rushy swamps, and is intersected by numerous rivulets, and by one considerable river. The number of Bisons consists, at present, of about 700: they are protected by the Government, and are only suffered to be killed in small numbers, by especial permission. When the wolves are to be hunted, it is done with caution, and by a small number of dogs; and any noisy occupations which might disturb the animals, are prohibited within the forest.†

From the habits of this creature, his indocility, and the instinctive aversion to the domestic races, it will appear that he is not one of those animals which Providence has ordained to yield up their services to man, and become an instrument of good to our race. He is rather to be numbered amongst those which are destined to disappear before the progress of civilization and the arts. By a rare chance, human interference has saved the wreck of the species in Europe from that destruction which awaited it; but this can only be for a season, and the time will doubtless come, when the great Bison of the European woods will be numbered with those extinct species, whose bones alone remain to testify their former existence.

The next to be mentioned of the Bisontine group is proper to another hemisphere, and was only made known to us when the rich savannahs and boundless forests of the Western Continent revealed their living inhabitants to the wondering eyes of European travellers. The AMERICAN BISON, Bison Americanus, commonly, but erroneously, termed a Buffalo, resembles the Bison of Europe in his general form, and in some of his habits. His head is large; his forehead is broad and convex; his horns are short, thick, and black; his eyes are small, clear, and piercing, with a placid expression, except when he is irritated, and then the expression turns to that of ferocity and rage. He is very bulky in front, and has large withers, to which powerful muscles are attached to support his ponderous head. The back droops from the withers, and the posterior part of the body is meagre and thin. On the summit of his head there is an abundance of long woolly hair, which hangs over the face, the ears, and the horns. The throat, the neck, the shoulders, and the breast, are covered with long hair; the back, and the rest of the trunk, are covered with short hairy wool. The colour of his fur is, in summer, a light brown, in winter a brownish-black. The tail is about eighteen inches long, terminated by a tuft of hair. The female is smaller than the male, and has shorter horns, and less of hair on the anterior parts. The male, when fully grown, has been sometimes found to weigh 2000 lb., though the average weight is said to be 12 or 14 cwt.

This is a very strong and agile creature, making its way with great swiftness through tangled brushwood and heaps of snow. He is more irritable than dangerous, and flies from the sight of the hunter. When attacked by large dogs, he defends himself with courage. If his enemies catch him by his shaggy coat, he tosses them overhead in an instant. Should they succeed in pinning him by the nose, after the manner of attack by the bull-dog, he spreads his fore-legs, and brings his hind-feet forward till he treads the dog beneath him. He then tears his head loose, regardless of the wound, and crushes his enemy beneath his feet. These animals are eminently gregarious and migratory. They feed on the herbage of plains, and the sedgy plants of morasses and swamps. They are fond of salt, and travel great distances to the saline springs which yield this condiment: they swim with ease, crossing the most rapid rivers: they delight in coolness and moisture, bathing in pools and lakes during the heat of summer: in the winter season they dig the snow with their feet, that they may reach the plants beneath. They inhabit the temperate parts of North America, congregating in herds, in the woods and vast plains and savannahs where they feed. In summer they migrate northward, and then it is that they are seen in those prodigious herds that strike the traveller with wonder. The countless multitude seems to darken the plain, and stretch to the horizon. Captains Lewis and Clark, on one occasion, mention that the moving mass which they beheld could not be less than 20,000 in number. At another time, they saw a herd crossing the Missouri, which, though the river was a mile in breadth, stretched across it from side to side as thick as the animals could swim.

The paths they make to the pools of fresh water or saline springs which they frequent, are often as numerous and trodden as the highways of a peopled country; and all travellers in the western countries speak with amazement of the traces of their numbers. They retire to the boundless wilds of the interior before the progress of the settler, and from the persecution of the chase. Formerly they were to be found to the eastward of the Apalachian Mountains; but they are now driven to the remoter wilderness towards the Ohio, the Missouri, and west of the Mississippi on the south. They are the subjects of incessant attack and pursuit by the Indian tribes, who feed upon their flesh, and make cloaks, sandals, and other fabrics, of their hides. They are often slaughtered in vast numbers together. Sometimes they are driven in crowds into ravines, and to the edges of precipices, where they are killed by lances and other missiles. Sometimes, the grass being set fire to, the herd is encompassed and thrown into confusion, and all other means which their savage persecutors can devise are employed to entrap and destroy them. This frightful carnage cuts off by degrees the sources of the future supply; and the time may come when this marvel of the American wilderness will be as rare to be seen as the Bison of the Lithuanian forests.

Of the fitness of this creature for domestication no doubt can exist. He is the native Ox of America: and had the country been inhabited by civilized communities, in place of tribes of savage hunters, a creature so formed by Nature for the service of man could not have remained unsubdued. He is far more docile than the Bison of Europe, and manifests no antipathy to the domestic race. He breeds with the latter; but how far the mixed progeny would be fruitful with one another, has not, it is believed, been determined. He is tamed with great facility, and manifests no ferocity. Numbers are sometimes separated from the herd by the back-woodsmen of the United States, driven long journeys, and brought in, perfectly subdued, to the American towns, to be disposed of to the inhabitants. It is said that they are sometimes kept on the farms of Kentucky, where the objections to them are,—that the cow yields a small quantity of milk, and of a musky flavour; and that she is restless, leaping the barriers intended to confine her, and enticing the other cattle to follow her to the woods. The flesh of the animal is reckoned good, and in an especial degree the tongue, and fleshy hump upon the shoulder. The hair has so much of the woolly character, that it may be woven into cloth, or formed into hats by the felting process: the skin is very thick, and when tanned, or else with the wool upon it, forms a warm covering, used by the Indians for cloaks and blankets. But the chief value of the domesticated Bison, it may be believed, would be for the purposes of labour, for which his agility and the great strength of his shoulders seem peculiarly to adapt him. A farmer on the great Kenhawa, we are informed by Mr Bingley, broke a young Bison to the yoke: the animal performed his work to admiration, and the only fault his master had to find with him was, that his pace was too quick for the steer with which he was yoked.

Beyond the range of the American Bison, and stretching into regions of everlasting ice, is the habitat of another species of Bison, suited to other conditions of temperature and food. The MUSK OX, Ovibos moschatus, first appears about the 60th degree of northern latitude, and thence is found to the very extremity of the American continent, wandering in search of food to the dreary islands beyond it during the brief space of the arctic vegetation. This creature is about the size of the little Ox of the most northerly Highlands of Scotland. He has no muzzle, or naked space around the nose and lips, like the Common Ox and Bison, but, like the Sheep, he is covered to the lips with hair; and hence the genus has been termed Ovibos, as partaking of the character of the Ox and the Sheep. His horns, broad at the base, covering the upper part of the forehead, and bending downward, and then upward, enable him to defend himself against the Bear and the Wolf. To protect him from the cold, he is enveloped from head to foot in a dense fur, consisting partly of hair and partly of wool. The long hair almost trails to the ground, and underneath is a thick coat of delicate wool, of which fabrics like the finest silk may be formed. He has short muscular limbs and hoofs, like those of the Rein-deer, and he is endowed with great activity, scaling the icy rocks of the country when pursued. He feeds partly on grasses and partly on lichens, and he is usually seen browsing in small herds or bands. His skin emits the strong odour of musk. Though suited, perhaps, to perform the same services as the Rein-deer, he has never been subjected to servitude. He is hunted by the rude Indians for his skin and flesh, which last is hard, lean, and tainted with the flavour of musk. The Esquimaux, whose country he inhabits along with the Rein-Deer, cover their heads and faces with his long hair, to defend them from the bites of musquitoes. They eat his flesh, and devour the contents of his paunch, which is filled with the lichens and other plants on which he feeds.*

A like form of the Bison seems to have extended westward into Asia, by Behring’s Staits, along the shores of the Icy Ocean. But the osseous remains of this animal alone exist, and naturalists have not determined whether he was identical with the species of America, or distinct from it. His habitat shews that he was, like it, formed to brave the rigour of the coldest climates of the globe.

Proceeding southward into Central Asia, another species of the Bisontine family appears, with habits which adapt him to the services of man. This creature is the Yak of the Tartar nations, the Bos gruniens of modern naturalists, so named on account of the sound of his voice, which, like that of other Bisons, resembles the grunting of the Hog. This animal is found, both in the wild and the domesticated state, extending from the mountains of Thibet, through the vast countries of the Kalmuk and Mongolian nations, to the Pacific Ocean. In the wild state his chief habitat is near the chain of snowy mountains separating India from Tartary.

This species of Bison is about the size of the lesser breeds of Oxen in Britain; but he is of a stout form, with short muscular limbs. He has fourteen pairs of ribs like the European Bison, and the anterior spines of his back are so lengthened as to form withers. He is armed with short and smooth horns, which frequently are wanting: they are black, or white, or white tipped with black, and bend upwards at the points. His muzzle is narrow, and covered with hairs, approaching in this respect to the character of the Ovibos. He is thickly clothed with hair and wool, to protect him from the cold of the elevated country which he inhabits. On the forehead, the hair is short and curling; on the back, long, pendent, and mixed with wool; and along the spine runs a kind of mane. The tail reaches to the heels, and is covered with long, fine hairs, giving to the animal the aspect of an ox with a horse’s tail: hence he has been sometimes termed the Horse-tailed Buffalo. The colour of the hair varies in the domesticated race; it is usually black, or brownish-black, but other parts of the body are white, as the legs, the back, and the fine and graceful tail. The height of the animals at the withers is said to be about three feet ten inches, but there must be great variations in size; for, in the British Museum, there is preserved the tail of a Yak, which measures six feet in length.*

The Yaks, in their state of nature, seem to prefer the woods of mountains to the valleys and open plains, and, like other Bisons, to seek the neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and pools; and this fondness for an