Buffon's Natural History. Volume 08 (of 10) / Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c

Barr’s Buffon.

Buffon’s Natural History.

CONTAINING

A THEORY OF THE EARTH,
A GENERAL
HISTORY OF MAN,
OF THE BRUTE CREATION, AND OF
VEGETABLES, MINERALS,
&c. &c.

FROM THE FRENCH.
WITH NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR.
IN TEN VOLUMES.
VOL. VIII.

PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR,
AND SOLD BY H. D. SYMONDS, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

1807.
T. Gillet, Printer, Wild-court.

CONTENTS
OF
THE EIGHTH VOLUME.

Of Carnivorous Animals.

Directions for placing the Plates in the Eighth Volume.

[BUFFON’S]

NATURAL HISTORY.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 135. Camel.

FIG. 136. Dromedary.

[THE CAMEL AND THE DROMEDARY.]

These two names do not include two different species, but only two distinct races, subsisting from time immemorial in the camel species. The principal, and perhaps the only perceptible character by which they differ, consists in the camel’s bearing two hunches on the back, and the dromedary only one, who is also less, and not so strong as the camel; but both of them herd and intermix together, and the production from this cross breed is more vigorous, and of greater value, than the others.

These mongrels form a secondary race, which mix and multiply among themselves, and with the first race; so that in this species, as well as in that of other domestic animals, there are many varieties, the most general of which are relative to the difference of climate. Aristotle has judiciously marked the two principal races; the first, which has two hunches, under the name of the Bactrian Camel; and the second under that of the Arabian Camel: the first are called Turkish and the others Arabian Camels. This distinction still subsists, but it appears, since the discovery of those parts of Africa and Asia which were unknown to the ancients, that the dromedary is, without comparison, more numerous and more universal than the camel: the last being seldom found in any other place than Turkestan, and some other parts of the Levant; while the dromedary, more common than any other beast of burthen in Arabia, is found in all the northern parts of Africa, from the Mediterranean to the river Niger, and is also met with in Egypt, in Persia, in Southern Tartary, and in all the northern parts of India. The dromedary, therefore, occupies an immense tract of land, while the camel is confined to narrow limits. The first inhabits hot and parched regions; the second, a more moist soil and temperate climate; and the whole species, as well the one as the other, appears to be confined to a zone of three or four hundred leagues in breadth, which spreads from Mauritania to China, for they subsist neither above nor below this zone, and although a native of warm climates, this animal is averse to those where the heat is excessive; his species ends where that of the elephant begins, and it cannot exist either under the burning heat of the torrid zone, or in the milder climates of the temperate. It appears to be originally a native of Arabia, for that is not only the country where they are the greatest in number, but where they seem to be in the best condition. Arabia is the most dry country in the world, and one in which water is the most scarce. The camel is the least thirsty of all animals, and can pass several days without any drink. The land is almost in every part dry and sandy. The feet of the camel are formed to travel in sand; and he cannot support himself on moist and slippery ground. Herbage and pasture are wanting in this country, as is also the ox, whose place is supplied by the camel.

We cannot be deceived as to the native country of these animals, when we consider their nature and structure which must be conformable thereto; especially when those are not modified by the influence of other climates. It has been tried, but without effect, to multiply camels in Spain; they have also in vain been transported to America, but they have neither succeeded in the one climate, nor in the other, and they are seldom to be met with in the East Indies beyond Surat and Ormus: not that we mean to say absolutely that they cannot subsist and increase in the East Indies, Spain, America, and even in colder countries, as in France, Germany, &c. By keeping them during the winter in warm stables, feeding and treating them with care, not letting them labour, or suffering them to walk out but when the weather is fine, they might be kept alive and we might even hope to see them multiply; but such productions are small and imbecile, and the parents themselves are weak and languid. They lose, therefore, all their value in these climates, and, instead of being useful, they are very expensive to bring up, while in their native country they may be said to compose all the wealth of their masters.

The Arabs regard the camel as a present from Heaven, a sacred animal, without whose aid they could neither subsist, trade, nor travel. The milk of these beasts is their common nourishment: they likewise eat their flesh, especially that of the young ones, which they reckon very good. The hair of these animals, which is fine and soft, and is renewed every year, serves them to make stuffs for their clothing and their furniture. Blest with their camels, they not only want for nothing, but they even fear nothing. In a single day they can traverse a tract of fifty leagues into the desert, and thus escape from their enemies. All the armies in the world would perish in pursuit of a troop of Arabs; and hence they are no further submissive than they please. Let any one figure to himself a country without verdure and without water; a burning sun, a sky always clear, plains covered with sand, and mountains still more parched, over which the eye extends and the sight is lost, without being stopped by a single living object; a dead earth constantly whirled about by the winds, presenting nothing but bones, flints scattered here and there, rocks perpendicular, or overthrown; a desert entirely naked, where the traveller never drew his breath under a friendly shade, where nothing accompanies him, and where nothing reminds him of an animated nature; an absolute solitude, a thousand times more frightful than that of the deepest forests; for trees appear as beings to the man, who thus desolate, thus naked, and thus lost, in an unbounded void, looks over all the extended space as his tomb: the light of the day, more dismal than the shade of the night, serves but to renew the idea of his own wretchedness and impotencies, and to present before his eyes the horror of his situation, by extending round him the immense abyss which separates him from the habitable parts of the earth; an immensity which he, in vain, attempts to overrun; for hunger, thirst, and burning heat, haunt every weary moment that remains between despair and death.

Nevertheless, the Arab has found means, by the aid of the camel, to surmount these difficulties, and even to appropriate to himself these frightful gaps of Nature: they serve him for an asylum, they secure his repose, and maintain his independence.—But why does not man know how to make use of any thing without abuse? This same free, independent, tranquil, and even rich Arab, instead of respecting these deserts as the ramparts of his liberty, sullies them with his guilt; he traverses them to rob the neighbouring nations of their slaves and gold; he makes use of them to exercise his robberies, which, unfortunately he enjoys more than his liberty; for his enterprizes are almost always successful. Notwithstanding the caution of his neighbours, and the superiority of their forces, he escapes their pursuit, and carries away with impunity all that he has plundered them of.

An Arab, who destines himself to this business of land piracy, early hardens himself to the fatigue of travelling; he accustoms himself to the want of sleep, to suffer hunger, thirst, and heat. For the same purpose he instructs his camels, he brings them up, and exercises them in the same method. A few days after their birth, he bends their legs under their bellies, forces them to remain on the earth, and in this situation loads them with a heavy weight, and which he only relieves them from to put on greater. Instead of suffering them to feed at pleasure, and to drink when they are thirsty, he regulates their repasts, and by degrees increases them to greater distances between each meal, diminishing also, at the same time, the quantity of their food. When they are tolerably strong, he exercises them in the course; he excites their emulation by the example of horses, and by degrees renders them as swift, and more robust. At length, when he is assured of the strength and swiftness of his camels, and that they can endure hunger and thirst, he then loads them with whatever is necessary for his and their subsistence, departs with them, arrives unexpected at the borders of the desert, stops the first passenger he sees, pillages the straggling habitations, loads his camels with his booty, and if he is pursued, if he is obliged to expedite his retreat, it is then that he displays all his own, and his animal’s talents. Mounted on one of his swiftest camels, he conducts the troop, makes them travel day and night, almost without stopping either to eat or drink; and in this manner, he easily passes over the space of three hundred leagues in eight days; and during all that time of fatigue and travel, he never unloads his camels, and only allows them an hour of repose, and a ball of paste each day. They often run in this manner for nine or ten days without meeting with any water, and when, by chance, there is a pool at some distance, they smell the water at more than half a league before they come to it. Thirst makes them redouble their pace, and then they drink enough for all the time past, and for as long to come; for they often travel many weeks, and their abstinence endures as long as they are upon their journey.

In Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, Barbary, &c. all their merchandize is carried by camels, which of all conveyances is the most ready and cheapest. Merchants and other travellers assemble themselves in caravans to avoid the insults and robberies of the Arabs. These caravans are often very numerous, and always composed of more camels than men. Each camel is loaded according to his strength,[A] and of this they are themselves so conscious that when overloaded they refuse to proceed, but remain in their resting posture till their burthen be lighted.

[A] The Orientalists call the camel the ship of the desert, alluding to the heavy loads which it carries.

Large camels generally carry 1000, or even 1200lbs. weight, and the smaller 6 or 700. In these commercial journeys, they do not travel quick, and as the route is often seven or eight hundred leagues, they regulate their motions and journeys; they only walk, and go every day ten or twelve leagues; they are unloaded every evening, and are suffered to feed at liberty. In a country where there is plenty of pasture, they eat enough in one hour to ruminate the whole night, and to serve them twenty-four; but they seldom meet with such pastures, and this delicate food is not necessary for them. They even seem to prefer worm-wood, thistles, nettles, furze, and other thorny vegetables to the softest herbs; and as long as they can find plants to brouze on, they easily dispense with drink.

But, this facility, with which they abstain so long from drink, is not pure habit, but rather an effect of their formation. Independently of the four stomachs, which are common to ruminating animals, the camel is possessed of a fifth bag, which serves him as a reservoir to retain the water. This fifth stomach is peculiar to the camel; it is so large as to contain a great quantity of water, where it remains without corrupting, or the other aliments being able to mix with it. When the animal is pressed with thirst, or has occasion to macerate his dry food for ruminating, he causes a part of this water to re-ascend into the paunch, and even into the œsophagus, by a simple contraction of the muscles. It is, therefore, by virtue of this very singular conformation, that the camel can remain several days without drink, and that he can take at one time a prodigious quantity of water, which continues pure and limpid in this reservoir, because neither the liquors of the body, nor the juices of digestion are able to mix with it.

If we compare the deformities, or rather the non-conformities of the camel with other quadrupeds, we cannot doubt but his nature has been considerably altered by constraint, slavery, and continual labour. The camel is the most completely, the most laboriously, and the most anciently enslaved of all domestic animals; the most anciently, because he inhabits climates where man was the most early civilised; the most completely, because in the other species of domestic animals, such as the horse, the dog, the ox, the sheep, the hog, &c. we find some individuals in their natural state, which have not yet been subjected by man; but the whole species of the camel is enslaved, and not any of them are to be found in their primitive state of independence and liberty; and lastly, he is the most laborious slave, because he has never been trained, either for shew, as are many horses, or for amusement, as are almost all dogs, or for the use of the table, as are the ox, the hog, the sheep, &c. He is the only beast of burden whom man has not harnessed, or taught to draw, but whose body is looked upon as a living carriage, which may be loaded and oppressed, even during his time of rest; and when in haste sleeps under the pressure of a heavy burden, his legs bent under him, and the weight of his body resting upon his stomach. This animal always bears the marks of slavery and pain. Below the breast, upon the sternum, there is a large callosity, as tough as horn, and similar ones upon the joints of his legs; although these callosities are to be met with on every camel, yet they themselves prove that they are not natural, but produced by excessive constraint and pain, from being often found filled with pus. The breast and legs, therefore, are deformed by these callosities: the back is also disfigured with a double or single hunch, and both these hunches and callosities are perpetuated from one generation to another. As it is evident, that the first deformity proceeds from the custom of forcing them when quite young to lay on their stomachs, with their legs bent under them, and in that cramped posture, to bear not only the weight of their bodies, but also the burthens which are put upon them; it must be presumed, that the hunch or hunches, owe their origin to the unequal compression of heavy burthens, which may have raised the flesh, and puffed up the fat and skin; for these hunches are not bony, but composed of a fleshy substance, partly of the same consistence as the udder of a cow. Thus the callosities and the hunches should be equally regarded as deformities produced by the continuance of labour, and constraint of body; and though at first accidental and individual, they are now become general and permanent in the whole species. It may also be presumed, that the bag which contains the water, and which is only an appendix to the paunch, has been produced by a forced extension of this viscera. The animal after enduring thirst for a long time by taking at one time as much, and, perhaps more water than the stomach could contain, this membrane would become extended and dilated, as has been observed in the stomach of sheep, which extends and acquires a capacity in proportion to the quantity of its aliment. The stomach is very small in sheep that are fed with grain, while it becomes very large in those that are fed with herbage.

These conjectures would be fully confirmed, or destroyed, if any of these animals could be found wild to compare with the domestic; but these animals do not exist any where in a natural state, or if they do, no one has yet remarked or described them; we must, therefore, suppose, that all which is good and fair about them they owe to Nature, and that all that is defective and deformed is occasioned by the labour and slavery imposed on them by the empire of man. These poor animals must suffer a great deal, as they make lamentable cries, especially when overloaded; but, notwithstanding they are continually oppressed, they have as much spirit as docility. At the first sign they bend their legs, and kneel upon the ground, to be loaded, thus saving the trouble of lifting up the burden to any great height. As soon as they are loaded they raise themselves up again without any assistance, and the conductor, mounted on one of them, precedes the whole troop who follow in the same pace as he leads. They want neither whip nor spur, but when they begin to be fatigued their conductors support their spirit, or rather charm their weariness, by a song, or the sound of some instrument. When they want to prolong the day’s journey they give the animals but one hour’s rest, after which, renewing their song, they proceed on their way for several hours more, and the singing continues until they come to another resting place; then the camels again kneel down, and are eased of their loads, by the cords being untied, and the bales rolling down on each side. In this cramped posture, with their bellies couched upon the earth, they sleep in the midst of their baggage, which is tied on again the next morning with as much readiness and facility as it was untied before they went to rest.

The callosities and tumours on their breast and legs, the bruises and wounds of the skin, the entire shedding their hair, the hunger, thirst, and leanness of these animals are not their only inconveniences; they are prepared for all these evils by one still greater, namely, castration. They leave but one male for eight or ten females, and all the camels of burden are commonly geldings; they are weaker without doubt than those which are not mutilated, but they are more tractable, and ready for employ at all times; while the others are not only ungovernable but even furious, in the rutting time, which remains forty days, and returns every spring; when, it is affirmed, they continually foam, and one or two red vesicles, as large as a hog’s bladder, issue from their mouths. At this time they eat very little, attack and bite animals, and even their masters, to whom at other times they are very submissive.

The camel does not copulate like other quadrupeds, for the female sinks upon her knees and receives the male in the same situation as she rests, sleeps, or is loaded. This posture, to which they are easily accustomed, becomes natural to them, since they assume it at the time of their copulation. The female goes about twelve months with young, and, like all large quadrupeds, produces but one at a birth: they have great plenty of milk, which is thick and nourishing, even for the human species, when mixed with a great quantity of water. The females seldom do any labour when with young, but are suffered to bring forth at liberty. The advantages derived from their produce, and their milk, perhaps surpasses that which would be gained by their labour; nevertheless, in some places a great part of the females undergo castration, in order to render them more fit for labour; and it is pretended, that this operation, instead of diminishing augments their strength and vigour, and adds to the beauty of their appearance. In general the fatter camels are, the more capable they are of enduring great fatigue. Their hunches appear to be formed from the superabundance of nourishment, for in long journeys, where they are stinted in their food, and where they suffer both hunger and thirst, these hunches gradually diminish, and are reduced so flat that their places are only discovered by the length of the hair, which is always longer on these parts than on the rest of the back; the leanness of the body increases in proportion as the hunches diminish. The Moors, who transport all their merchandize from Barbary and from Numidia into Ethiopia, depart with their camels well loaded, who are then very fat and vigorous, but bring the same animals back so lean that they commonly sell them at a low price to the Arabs of the desart, who fatten them anew

The ancients have affirmed that these animals are capable of generating at the age of three years: this appears to me rather doubtful, for at that age they have not attained half their growth. The genital member of the male, like that of the bull, is very long and slender; it tends forward during copulation, like that of every other animal; but in its usual state, it is bent backwards, and voids the urine between the legs, so that the male and female pass their urine in the same manner. The young camel sucks its mother twelve months, and when designed for labour, to make him strong and robust they leave him at liberty to suck or graze for a longer time, nor begin to load or put him to work till he has attained the age of four years. The camel commonly lives forty or fifty years, which term of life is proportioned to the time of its growth. It is without any foundation that some authors have advanced that he lives a hundred years.

By uniting under one point of view all the qualities of this animal, and all the advantages which are gained by him, he must be acknowledged to be the most useful of all the creatures under subordination to man. Gold and silk are not the true riches of the east, the camel is the treasure of Asia. He is of greater value than the elephant, as he does as much labour, and consumes not a twentieth part of the food. Besides the whole species is subjected to man, who propagates and multiplies it as much as he pleases. But it is not so with the elephants, whom they cannot multiply, can only subdue them individually, and that with great trouble and difficulty. The camel is not only of greater value than the elephant but perhaps not of less than the horse, the ass, and the ox, when all their advantages are united. He carries as much as two mules, and not only eats less, but feeds on herbs as coarse as the ass. The female furnishes milk longer than the cow; the flesh of young camels is as good and wholesome as veal; their hair is finer, and more sought after than the best wool. Even their excrements are useful, for sal ammoniac is made of their urine, and their dung, when dried and powdered, serves them for litter, as well as the horses, with whom they often travel in countries where neither straw nor hay is known. To conclude, they also make excellent fewel of this dung, which burns freely, gives a flame as clear, and almost as lively, as that of dry wood, and which is of great use in the deserts, where not a tree is to be seen, and where, from the deficiency of combustible matters, fire is almost as scarce as water.

[THE BUFFALO, THE BONASUS, THE AUROCHS, THE BISON, AND THE ZEBU.]

Although the Buffalo is now common in Greece, and tame in Italy, it was known by neither the ancient Greeks nor Romans; for he never had a name in the language of these people. The word buffalo, even indicates a foreign origin, not derived either from the Greek or Latin tongues. In effect, this animal is originally a native of the warmest climates of Africa and India, and was not transported and naturalized in Italy, till towards the seventh century. The moderns very improperly apply the name of bubalus to this animal, which, in Greek and Latin implies indeed, an African animal, but very different from the buffalo, as it is easy to demonstrate, by many passages of ancient authors. If we would ascribe the bubalus to any particular genus, it rather belongs to that of the antelope, than to that of the ox or the buffalo[B]. Belon having seen a small hunched ox at Cairo, which differed from the buffalo and common ox, imagined it might be the bubalus of the ancients; but if he had carefully compared the characters of the bubalus given by the ancients, with those of this small ox, he would have discovered his error; besides, we can speak of it with decision, for we have seen this small hunched ox alive, and having compared the description we have given of it with that of Belon, we can have no doubt of its being the same animal. It was shewn at the fair at Paris in 1752, under the name of the zebu; which we have adopted to describe this animal by, for it is a particular breed of the ox, and not a species of the buffalo or bubalus.

[B] Upon the first publication of Buffon’s History, M. Caesani made some remarks upon the assertion that the buffalo had no name in the Greek or Latin languages and with a great display of erudition, in a letter to Buffon, endeavoured to shew that there were words in both these languages which nearly approached to that of buffalo; but M. Buffon himself justly remarks that Caetane rather proves the possibility of deriving the name of buffalo from some words in the Greek and Latin languages than that this name was really in use among them.

Aristotle, speaking of oxen, only mentions the common ox, except saying, that among the Arachotas in India, there are wild oxen, which differ from the domestic ones as much as wild boars differ from hogs; but in another part, he gives the description of a wild ox of Pæonia, a province adjoining to Macedonia, which he calls bonasus. Thus the common ox and the bonasus, are the only animals of this kind taken notice of by Aristotle; and what must appear singular, the bonasus, although fully described by this great philosopher, has not been recognised by any of the Greek or Latin naturalists who have written after him, all of whom have literally copied him on this subject; so that to this day, there is no more than the name of bonasus known, without the knowledge of the animal which it ought to be applied to. If we consider, that Aristotle, in speaking of the wild oxen of temperate climates, has only mentioned the bonasus; and that, on the contrary, the Greek and Latin authors of succeeding ages, have not spoken of the bonasus, but describe these wild oxen by the names of urus and bison, we shall be led to believe, that the bonasus must be either the one or the other of these animals; indeed by comparing what Aristotle has said of the bonasus, with what we know of the bison, it is more than probable, that these two names indicate the same animal. Julius Cæsar is the first who mentions the urus. Pliny and Pausanias are also the first who speak of the bison. Since Pliny’s time, the name of bubalus has been given indiscriminately to the urus, or the bison, and this confusion has increased with time. To the bonasus, bubalus, urus, and bison, have been added, the catopleba, the thur, the bubalus of Belon, the bisons of Scotland and America, and all our naturalists have made as many different species as they have found names. The truth is here so obscured by clouds, and so surrounded with errors, that it will be difficult to clear up this part of Natural History, which the contradiction of reports, the variety of descriptions, the multiplicity of names, the diversity of places, the difference of languages, and the obscurity of the times, seems to have condemned to perpetual darkness.

I shall, therefore, give my opinion upon this subject, and afterwards present the proofs upon which it is founded.

1. The animal at present called buffalo, ([fig. 137.]) was not known to the ancients.

2. The buffalo, at present domestic in Europe, is the same as the tame or wild buffalo of India and Africa.

3. The bubalus of the Greeks and Romans is neither the buffalo nor the small ox of Belon, but the animal that the gentlemen of the Academy of Sciences have described in treating of the Barbary cow, and which we call the bubalus.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 137. Buffalo.

FIG. 138. Bison.

4. The small ox of Belon which we have seen, and call by the name of zebu, is no more than a variety in the species of the ox.

5. The bonasus of Aristotle is the same animal as the bison ([fig. 138.]) of the Latins.

6. The bison of America might originally come from the bison of Europe.

7. The urus or aurochs, is the same animal as our common bull, in his wild and natural state.

8. The bison only differs from the aurochs by accidental varieties, and consequently he is, as well as the aurochs, of the same species as the domestic ox; so that, it appears, all the denominations, and all the pretended species of the ancient and modern naturalists may be reduced to three; namely, the ox, the buffalo, and the bubalus.

I do not doubt that some of the propositions which I have laid down will appear mere bold assertions, particularly to those who are employed with the nomenclature of animals, or have endeavoured to give a catalogue of them; nevertheless, there is not one of these assertions which I am not able to prove. But before I enter into critical discussions, each of which demand particular propositions, I shall explain the observations and facts which conducted me into this enquiry, and which having satisfied me, may also prove satisfactory to others.

Domestic animals in very few respects resemble wild ones; their nature, their size, and their form, are less constant, and more subject to changes, especially in the exterior parts of the body. The influence of climate, so powerful over all Nature, acts with more force upon captive animals, than upon free. Food prepared by the hand of man, oftentimes scantily given and ill-chosen, joined to the inclemency of a foreign sky, in time produces alterations sufficiently deep to become constant, and to be perpetuated from one generation to another. I do not pretend to say, that this general cause of alteration is so powerful as to essentially alter the nature of beings, whose constitution is so fixed as that of animals; but it changes them in certain respects; it disguises and transforms them externally; it takes away from some parts, and gives rise to others; it paints them with various colours, and by its action upon the habit of the body, it has an influence on their dispositions, instincts, and most interior qualities. A single part changed in a composition so perfect as that of an animal body, is sufficient to make the whole sensible of the alteration; and it is for this reason, that our domestic animals differ almost as much in dispositions and instincts as in figure from those who continue at large in their natural state. Of this, the sheep furnishes a striking example; this species, such as it is at present, perishes in a very short time, if man ceases from tending it with care: it is also greatly changed, and very inferior to its original species. But to adhere to our present subject; we see what changes the ox has gone through, from the combined effects of climate, nourishment, and treatment, in a wild, and in a domestic state.

The most general, and most remarkable variety in domestic and even wild oxen, consists in that sort of hunch which some have between the shoulders: this race of oxen are called bisons, and it has been hitherto believed, that they were of a different species from the common ox; but as we are assured, that they produce together, and that the hunch diminishes in the first generation, and disappears in the second or third, it is evident, that this hunch is only a variable and accidental character, which does not prevent the bison from belonging to the same species with the common ox. There were formerly in the desart parts of Europe, wild oxen, some without hunches, and others with them; thus the variety seems to be natural, and to proceed from the abundance and more substantial quality of food; for we remarked, when treating of the camels, that when those animals are lean, and badly fed, they have not even the appearance of a hunch. The ox without a hunch was named vrochs, and turochs, in the German tongue; and the ox with a hunch, in the same language, was termed visen. The Romans, who knew neither of these wild oxen before they saw them in Germany, adopted those names; of vrochs they made vrus; and of visen, bison; and they never imagined that the wild ox described by Aristotle, under the name of bonasus, could possibly be either of these oxen, whose names they had thus latinised.

Another difference between the aurochs and the bison is the length of the hair; the neck, shoulders, and throat of the bison are covered with very long hairs; while the aurochs have all these parts covered with a short hair, resembling that of the rest of the body, the front excepted, which has frizzled hair. But this difference of the hair is still more accidental than that of the hunch, and, like that, depends on the food and climate, as we have already proved in the goats, sheep, dogs, cats, &c. Thus, neither the hunch, nor the difference in the quantity of hair, are specific characters, but merely simple and accidental variations.

A variety still more extended, and to which naturalists have given more of character than it really deserves, is the form of the horns; they have not considered that, in our domestic cattle, the shape, size, position, direction, and even number of horns, vary so strongly, that it would be impossible to pronounce which is the true model of Nature. The horns of some cows are curved and bent downwards; others have them straight, long, and elevated. There are whole races of sheep, who have sometimes two, sometimes four horns, and there are breeds of cows who have no horns. These exterior, or, as I may say, accessory parts of the body, have as little permanency as the colours of the hair, which in domestic animals vary and combine in every manner. This difference in the shape and direction of the horns, which is so common, must not then be regarded as a distinctive character of the species; though, it is upon this character alone that our naturalists have established their species; and, as Aristotle, in the description he gives of the bonasus, says, that its horns turn inwards, they have from that alone separated it from all other oxen, and made it a particular species, without having ever seen the individual. Upon this variation of the horns, in domestic animals, we have quoted cows and ewes, rather than bulls and rams, because the females are more numerous than the males, and we may every where observe thirty cows or ewes for one bull or ram.

The mutilation of animals by castration seems to hurt the individual only, and not to affect the species; nevertheless, it is certain, that this custom restrains Nature on one side and weakens it on the other. A single male, condemned to serve thirty or forty females, must exhaust himself without satisfying them. The ardour of love must be unequal; indifferent in the male, who exceeds the designs of Nature, and too ardent in the female, who must be so limited; from thence all the productions must chiefly be tinctured with feminine qualities, a greater number of females will be produced than males; and even the males possess more of the mother than the father. This is, without doubt, the reason there are more girls than boys born in the countries where men have a great number of wives, while among those where the men are permitted to have but one, more males than females are born. It is true, that among domestic animals they commonly withhold the most beautiful from castration, to become the parent of a numerous generation. The first productions of these chosen males will be strong and vigorous; but from having too many copies from this single mould the impression of Nature is deformed, or at least impaired, and not preserved in its full perfection; the race must, therefore, be weakened and degenerate; and this, perhaps, is the cause why more monsters are to be found among domestic than wild animals, where the number of males, which concur to generation, is equal to that of the females. Moreover, when there is but one male to a great number of females they have not the liberty of consulting their own taste, and, consequently, deprived of those emotions which arise from spontaneous pleasures. In the females there remains nothing poignant in their amours, and they languish in expecting the cold approaches of a male that is not of their own choice, who is frequently not accommodated to them, and from whom they do not receive those flattering caresses as if he were obliged to court a preference. From these sluggish amours insipid beings must proceed, who will have neither that courage, spirit, nor strength, which Nature only can bestow on every species by leaving to individuals their faculties quite entire, especially the liberty of choice between the sexes. It is well known, in the example of horses, that the cross breed is always the finest; we ought not, therefore, to confine our female cattle to a single male of their own country, who already has too much the resemblance of his mother, and who, consequently, far from improving the species, can only continue to degrade it. Mankind, in this practice, have preferred their convenience to every other advantage; they have not endeavoured to support, or to embellish Nature, but submit her operations to them, that they may enjoy her productions in a more despotic manner. The males are the superior of each species; they have the most spirit, and are the least tractable; a greater number of males in our flocks therefore would render them less docile, more difficult to conduct and to watch.

To these causes of degeneration in domestic animals we must yet mention another, which alone is capable of producing more changes than all the rest put together, viz. the transportation of animals from one climate to another; oxen, sheep, and goats, have been carried to all parts; in every place they have felt the influence of the climate, and imbibed impressions from every soil and every sky, so that nothing is more difficult than to recognize, in this great number of varieties, those who are the least estranged from the type of Nature.

Having thus explained the general causes of varieties among domestic animals, I shall proceed to the particular proofs of what I have advanced on the subject of oxen and buffaloes. I have said, 1st. That the animal at present known by the name of the buffalo was not known by the ancient Greeks, and Romans. This is evident, since none of their authors have described, or even used, a name which can be applied to it; besides, we are informed, by the annals of Italy, that the first buffalo was brought there towards the end of the fifth century, A. D. 595.

2. The Buffalo, at present domestic in Europe, is the same as the wild or tame buffalo of India and Africa. This needs no other proof, than the comparison of our description of the buffalo, taken from an animal we saw alive, with the remarks that travellers have given of the buffaloes of Persia, Mogul, Bengal, Egypt, Guinea, and the Cape of Good Hope. In all these countries this animal is the same, and does not differ from our buffalo but in very slight differences.

3. The Bubalus of the Greeks and Romans, is not the buffalo, nor the small ox of Belon; but the animal that the gentlemen of the Academy has described under the name of the cow of Barbary. This appears clear from Aristotle placing the bubalus with the stags and fallow deer, and not with the oxen. In other parts, he speaks of him among the roe-bucks, and says, that he but badly defends himself with his horns, and that he flies from ferocious animals. Pliny, in speaking of the wild oxen of Germany, says, that it is through ignorance that the common people give the name of bubalus to these oxen, for the bubalus is an animal of Africa, which in some measure resembles a calf or a stag. The bubalus is then a timid animal, who has no other resource than by flight to avoid the attack of ferocious animals, who consequently from this circumstance must be swift, and possess something of a make between the calf and a stag; all these characters, not one of which apply to the buffalo, are found perfectly united in the figure of the animal which Horatius Fontana sent to Aldrovandus, and of which the gentlemen of the Academy have given a figure and description under the name of the cow of Barbary; and they have thought, with me, that it was the bubalus of the ancients.[C]

[C] The zebu, or small ox of Belon, has none of the characters of the bubalus; it differs from it almost as much as our ox differs from the antelope: Belon also is the only naturalist who has considered this small ox to be the bubalus of the ancients.

4. The small ox of Belon is only a variety in the species of the ox. We shall easily prove this, by only referring to the figure of the animal given by Belon, Prosper Alpinus, Edwards, and to the description we have made. We have seen it alive; his conductor told us, that he brought him from Africa, where he was called Zebu; that he was domestic; and that they used him to ride on. This animal is, in fact, very gentle and familiar; he is of an agreeable figure, though heavy and thick; nevertheless he so perfectly resembles the ox, that I cannot give a more just idea of him, than by saying, if we were to look at a very handsome bull, through a glass that diminishes objects one half, the figure would very near approach that of the zebu.

5. The Bonasus of Aristotle is the same as the bison of the Latins. This proposition cannot be proved, without a critical discussion, with the whole detail of which I shall not trouble the reader. Gesner, who was a learned man, as well as a naturalist, and who thought with me, that the bonasus might be the bison, has more carefully than any other person examined and discussed the observations which Aristotle gives on the bonasus, and at the same time has corrected many erroneous expressions in the translation of Theodore Gaza, which nevertheless all the naturalists have followed without examination: in adopting, therefore, his elucidations, and in suppressing from the remarks of Aristotle, whatever is obscure, contradictory or fabulous, they appear to me reduced to the following description:

The bonasus is a wild ox of Pœonia, and is at least as big as a domestic ox, and of the same make; he is covered from the shoulders to the eyes with a long hair, like the mane of a horse; his voice is like the ox; his horns are short, and curved round the ears; his legs are covered with long hair, soft as wool, and his tail is small compared to his size, although in other respects it resembles that of the ox. Like the bull, he has the custom of pawing the ground with his feet; his hide is hard, his flesh is tender, and good. By these characters, which are all we can rely on from Aristotle, we see how near the bonasus approaches towards the bison. Every part, in fact, agrees, the shape of the horns excepted, but which, as we have already observed, greatly varies in animals, who are, notwithstanding, of the same species. We have seen such crooked horns, taken from an hunched ox of Africa, and we shall hereafter prove, that this hunched ox is no other than the bison. This we shall be able to confirm by the testimonies of ancient authors. Aristotle mentions the bonasus as an ox of Pœonia; and Pausanias, speaking of the Pœonian bulls, says, in two different parts of his works, that these bulls are bisons; he even expressly says, that the bulls of Pœonia, which he saw at the public games at Rome, had very long hair upon the breast, and about the jaws. In short, Julius Cæsar, Pliny, Pausanias, Solinus, &c. in speaking of wild oxen, mention the aurochs and the bison, but take no notice of the bonasus. It must, therefore, be supposed, that in less than four or five centuries the species of the bonasus has been lost, unless we allow that the names bonasus and bison indicate only the same animal.

6. The bison of America might come originally from the bison of Europe. We have already laid down the foundation of this opinion in our discourse on the animals of the two continents; they are the result of the experience of M. de la Nux, who has given much information on this subject. He has informed us, that the bisons, or hunched oxen, of India and Africa, copulate with the bulls and cows of Europe, and that the hunch is only an accidental character, which diminishes in the first generation, and disappears in the second or third. Since the bisons of India are of the same species as our oxen, and have, consequently the same origin, is it not natural to extend this organ to the bison of America? Every thing seems to concur in support of this supposition. The bisons appear to be originally of cold and temperate regions; their name is derived from the German language; the ancients say that they were found in that part of Germany which borders on Scythia; and there are now bisons in the north of Germany, in Poland, and in Scotland; they might, therefore, have passed into America, or even have come from thence, as they are animals common to the two continents. The only difference between the bisons of Europe and those of America is, that the latter are less. But even this difference is a new presumption that they are of the same species, for we have already remarked, that generally both domestic and wild animals, which have passed of themselves, or have been transported, into America, have, without any exception, diminished in size; besides, all the characters, even the hunch, and the long hairs at the hinder parts, are the same in the bisons of America and in those of Europe; thus we cannot refuse to regard them, not only as animals of the same species but also of the same race.

7. The urus, or aurochs, is the same animal as the common bull, in his wild and natural state. This position is clear, as the figure and constitution of the body of the aurochs is perfectly similar to that of our domestic bull. The aurochs is only larger and stronger, like every other animal who enjoys his liberty. The aurochs are still to be met with in some provinces of the north. The young aurochs have been taken from their mothers, and being reared, when of a proper age have copulated with the domestic bulls and cows, so that we cannot doubt but they are of the same species.

8. To conclude, the bison differs from the aurochs by accidental varieties only, and, consequently, is also of the same species as the domestic ox. The hunch, the length and quality of the hair, and the form of the horns, are the sole characters by which we can distinguish the bisons from the aurochs. But we have known the hunched oxen produce with the domestic kind; we likewise know, that the length and quality of the hair, in all animals, depend on the nature of the climate; and we have remarked, that in oxen, goats, and sheep, the form of the horns frequently varies. These differences, therefore, are not sufficient to establish two distinct species; and since our domestic oxen produce with the hunched oxen of India, we have reason to think they would copulate with the bison, or hunched ox of Europe. There are, in the almost innumerable varieties of these animals, in different climates, two primitive kinds, both of which have long continued in a natural state; the hunched ox, or bison, and the aurochs, or ox without an hunch. These kinds have subsisted till this present time, either in a wild or domestic state, and are scattered, or rather have been transported, into all the climates of the earth. All the domestic oxen without hunches have proceeded originally from the aurochs, and those with the hunch from the bison. To give a just idea of these varieties we shall make an enumeration of them as they are found in the different parts of the world.

To begin with the north of Europe; the few oxen and cows of Iceland are deprived of horns, although they are of the same kind as our oxen. The size of these animals is rather relative to the plenty and quality of pasture than to the nature of the climate. The Dutch fetch lean cows from Denmark, which fatten prodigiously in their rich meadows, and give a great deal of milk: these Denmark cows are larger than ours. The bulls and cows of the Ukraine, where there is excellent pasture, are said to be the biggest in Europe, and they are of the same kind as our oxen. In Switzerland, where the tops of the mountains are covered with an abundant and flourishing verdure, and which is solely reserved as food for the cattle, the oxen are nearly double the size of those in France, where commonly they are fed on the coarsest herbage, which is refused by horses. Bad hay, and leaves, are the common food of our oxen in winter, and in spring, when they should be refreshed, they are excluded from the meadows; they, therefore, suffer still more in that season than in winter, for they then have little or nothing given them in the stable, but are driven into the roads, into fallow fields, or into the woods, and are always kept at a distance from the fertile lands, so that they are more fatigued than fed; at last, in summer, they are permitted to enter the meadows, which are then stripped, and parched with heat and drought; there is not, therefore, a single season throughout the year in which these animals are amply or agreeably fed. This is the sole cause which renders them weak, poor, and small; for, in Spain, and in some cantons of the provinces of France, where there is good pasture, and solely reserved for the oxen, they are much stronger and larger.

In Barbary, and most part of Africa, where the ground is dry, and the pasture poor, the oxen are still smaller, the cows give much less milk than those in France, and the greatest part of them lose their milk when their calves are taken from them. They are the same in some parts of Persia, of Lower Ethiopia, and in Great Tartary, while in the same countries, and at very small distances, as in Calmuck Tartary, in Upper Ethiopia, and in Abyssinia, the oxen are a prodigious size. This difference, therefore, depends more on the plenty of their food than on the temperature of the climate. In the northern, temperate, and warm regions, we equally find, at very small distances, small or large oxen, according to the quantity and quality of the pasture, they are fed upon.

The breed of aurochs, or ox without a hunch, inhabits the cold and temperate zones, and is not much dispersed in the southern countries. On the contrary the breed of the bison, or hunched ox, occupies all the southern provinces. In the whole continent of India, in the eastern and southern islands of all Africa, from Mount Atlas to the Cape of Good Hope, we find no others but hunched oxen; it even appears, that this breed, which has prevailed in all the warm countries, has many advantages over the others; for, like the bison, of which they are the issue, their hair is softer, and more glossy than our oxen, who, like the auroch, are furnished but with little hair, of a harsh nature. These hunched oxen are also swifter, and more proper to supply the place of the horse[D]; at the same time they are less clumsy, stupid, and indolent than our oxen. They are more tractable, and sensible, have more of that intelligence which renders them useful; they are also treated with more care than our finest horses. The regard the Indians have for these animals is so great that it has degenerated into superstition, the last mark of blind respect. The ox, as the most useful animal, has appeared to them the most worthy of being revered; and they have made an idol of the object of their veneration, a kind of beneficent and powerful divinity; for we are desirous of rendering all we respect, great, and capable of doing much good, or much harm.

[D] At Surat, Persia, and in all the provinces of India, they are used for carrying burdens and drawing a kind of coaches, and by constant habit they acquire such a dexterity that few animals can outrun them. See Voyages della Valle, Owington, Mandelslo, Flacourt, Grosse, &c.

These hunched oxen vary perhaps more than ours in the colours of the hair, and the figure of their horns, the handsomest are all white, like the oxen of Lombardy. Some are destitute of horns, while others have them very much elevated, and others so bent down, that they are almost pendent. It even appears, that we must divide this first race of bisons, or hunched oxen, into two secondary kinds; the one large, and the other small, and this last is that of the zebu. Both of them are found nearly in the same climates, and are equally mild and easily managed; both have soft hair, and a hunch upon the back; this hunch is nothing but an excrescence, a kind of wen, a piece of tender flesh, as good to eat as the tongue of an ox. The hunches of some oxen weigh from forty to fifty pounds, others have them much smaller. Some of these oxen have prodigious large horns; there is one in the French king’s cabinet, which is three feet and a half in length, and seven inches in diameter at the base; many travellers affirm that they have seen them, of a capacity sufficient to contain fifteen, and even twenty pints of water.

The method of castrating large cattle is not known in any part of Africa, and it is but little practised in India. When the bulls undergo this operation, it is not by cutting, but compressing their testicles; and although the Indians keep a number of these animals to draw their carriages, and work in their grounds, they do not by any means train up so many as we do. As in all hot countries the cows give but little milk; as the natives are but little acquainted with cheese and butter; and as the flesh of the calves is not so good as in Europe, they multiply the horned beasts less than we do. Besides, all those southern provinces of Africa and Asia, being much less peopled than Europe, there are a great number of wild oxen, who are taken when young; these become tame of themselves, and submit to labour without any resistance; they become so tractable, that they are managed with greater ease than horses, the voice of their master is only requisite to direct and make them obey; they are very careful of them in every respect, and give them plenty of the best food. These animals, thus raised, appear to be of a different nature from our oxen, who only know us by our bad treatment; the goad, whip, and scarcity of food, render them stupid and weak: in short, if we knew our own interest, we should treat what is dependent on us with better usage. Men of inferior rank, and people the least polished, seem to have a better sense than others of the laws of equality, and the shades of natural equality. The servant of the farmer may be said to be upon a level with his master; the horses of the Arabs, and the oxen of the Hottentots, are favourite domestics, companions in their exercises, assistants in their labour, and with whom they share their habitation, their bed, and their tables. Man, by this community, debases himself less than the beasts are elevated and humanized. They become affectionate, sensible, and intelligent; they there perform, through love, all that they do here through fear. They do more; for as their nature is raised by the gentleness of their education, and by the continuance of attention towards them, they become capable of actions almost human. The Hottentots bring up their oxen to war, and make use of them nearly in the same manner as the Indians do of the elephants; they instruct these oxen to guard their sheep, to conduct them from place to place, and to defend them from strangers and ferocious beasts; they teach them to know friends from enemies, to understand signs, and to obey the voice. Thus the most stupid of men are the best preceptors of beasts.

All the southern parts of Africa and Asia are then inhabited with bisons, or hunched oxen, among which is a great variety in respect to size, colour, shape of the horns, &c. On the contrary, all the northern countries of these two parts of the world, and the whole of Europe, comprehending the adjacent island, as far as the Azores, have only oxen without hunches, who derive their origin from the aurochs; and as the aurochs, which is our ox in a wild state, is larger and stronger than our domestic ones, so the bison, or wild hunched ox, is also stronger and larger than the tame ox of India. He is also sometimes smaller, but that depends only on the quantity of food. At Malabar, in Abyssinia, and Madagascar, where the meadows are naturally spacious and fertile, the bisons are of a prodigious size; in Africa and Arabia Petrea, where the land is dry, the zebus, or bisons, are of a small size.

In every part of America oxen without hunches are generally diffused, which the Spaniards and other Europeans have successively transported thither; these oxen have considerably multiplied, but are become less in these new countries. The species was absolutely unknown in South America; but in all the northern parts, as far as Florida, Louisiana, and even nearly to Mexico, the bisons, or hunched oxen, were found in great numbers. These bisons, which formerly inhabited the woods of Germany, Scotland, and other northern countries, have probably passed from one continent to the other, and are become, like other animals, smaller in this new world; and as they lived in climates more or less cold, their hair became longer or shorter. Their beards and hair is longer at Hudson’s Bay than at Mexico, and in general their hair is softer than the finest wool. We cannot, therefore, avoid believing these bisons of the new continent are of the same species as those of the old; they have preserved all the principal characters, as the hunch upon the shoulders, the long hair under the muzzle, and on the hinder parts of the body, and the short legs and tail; and by comparing what Hernandes, Fernandes, and every other historian and traveller of the new world have said, with what has been written concerning the bison of Europe, we shall be convinced, that these animals are not of a different species.

Thus the wild and domestic ox, the ox of Europe, Asia, America, and Africa; the bonasus, the aurochs, the bison, and the zebu, are all animals of the same species, which according to the differences of climate, food, and treatment, have undergone all the variations we have explained. The ox is the most useful animal, and also the most universally dispersed; for, excepting South America, he has been found in all parts; his constitution being equally formed to withstand the ardour of the south, or rigours of the north. He appears to be ancient in every climate; he is domestic in civilized nations, and wild in desart countries or among unpolished people. He supports himself by his own resources when in a state of nature, and never loses the qualities relative to the service of man. The young wild calves, which are taken from their mothers in India or Africa, become in a very short time, as tractable as those of the domestic kind; and this natural conformity is another striking proof of the identity of the species. The gentleness of character in these animals indicates the natural flexibility of their bodies; for in all species in which we have discovered the character of gentleness, and which have been subjected to a domestic state, there are more varieties than can be found in those which have remained wild through their character of inflexibility.

If it be asked, whether the aurochs or the bison be the primitive race of oxen, a satisfactory answer may be drawn from the facts we have just laid down. The hunch of the bison is, as it has been observed, no more than an accidental character, which is defaced and lost in the mixture of the two kinds. The aurochs, or ox without a hunch, is, then, the most powerful and predominant kind; if it were otherwise, the hunch, instead of disappearing, would extend and remain upon every one of this mixt breed. Besides, this hunch of the bison, like that of the camel, is less the production of Nature than the effect of labour, and the mark of slavery. From time immemorial, in almost every quarter of the globe, the ox has been obliged to carry burdens; the habitual, and often excessive load, has deformed their backs; and this deformity has been afterwards propagated through generations. Undeformed oxen are no longer to be seen, but in those countries where they have not made use of them as beasts of burden. In all Africa, and in the eastern continent, the oxen are hunched, occasioned by their having always carried loads on their shoulders. In Europe, where they are only employed for draught, they have not undergone this deformed alteration, which in the first place probably proceeds from the compression of the loads, and in the second from the abundance of food; for it disappears when the animal is lean and poorly fed. Some enslaved and hunched oxen might have escaped or been abandoned in the woods, and where their posterity would be loaded with the same deformity, which, far from disappearing, may have encreased by the abundance of food peculiar to uncultivated countries, so that this second breed would spread over all the desart lands of the north and south, and pass into the New Continent, like other animals, whose nature can support the cold. What still more confirms the identity of the species of the bison and aurochs, is, the bisons of North America have so strong a smell, that they have been called Musk Oxen by most travellers; and, at the same time, we find, by the accounts of many persons, that the aurochs, or wild ox of Prussia and Livonia, has the same scent of musk.

There remains, therefore, but two species, the buffalo and the ox, out of all the names placed at the head of this article, each of which the ancient and modern naturalists have treated as separate and distinct. These two animals, although greatly resembling each other, both domestic, often living under the same roof, and fed in the same meadows, have nevertheless constantly refused to unite though excited to it by their keepers. Their natures are more distant than that of the ass and the horse; there even appears to be a strong antipathy between them, for it is affirmed, that cows will not suckle young buffaloes, and the female buffaloes refuse the same kindness to the other calves. The buffalo is of a more obstinate nature, and less tractable than the ox. He obeys with great reluctance, and his temper is more coarse and brutal. Next to the hog, he is the filthiest of all domestic animals, and is very unwilling to be cleaned and dressed. His figure is very clumsy, and forbidding; his look stupidly wild; he stretches out his neck in an ignoble manner, and carries his head in a very bad posture, almost always inclined towards the ground. He bellows hideously, with a tone much stronger and deeper than that of the bull. His legs are thin, his tail bare, his physiognomy dark, and his skin as black as his hair. He differs chiefly from the ox by the colour of his hide, which is easily perceived under his spare covering of hair. His body is thicker and shorter than that of the ox; his legs are longer; his head proportionally much less; his horns are not so round, black, and partly compressed, and he has a tuft of frizzled hair over his forehead. His hide is likewise thicker and harder than that of the ox. His flesh is black, and hard, and not only disagreeable to the taste, but repugnant to the smell. The milk of the female is not so good as that of the cow, but she yields a greater quantity. In hot countries, almost all the cheese is made of buffalo’s milk. The flesh of the young buffaloes, though killed during the sucking time, is not a bit better. The hide alone is of more value than all the rest of the animal, whose tongue is the only part that is fit to eat: this hide is firm, pretty light, and almost impenetrable. As these animals are larger and stronger than oxen they are very serviceable; they make them draw, and not carry burdens; they lead them by the means of a ring passed through their nose. Two buffaloes harnessed, or rather chained, to a carriage, will draw as much as four strong horses. As they carry their necks and heads low, they employ the whole weight of their body in drawing, and their mass greatly surpasses that of a labouring horse, or ox.

The height and thickness of the buffalo alone indicates, that he is a native of warm countries. The largest quadrupeds belong to the torrid zone of the Old Continent; and the buffalo, for his magnitude, ought to be placed next to the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus. The camel is taller but less thick, and also a native of the southern countries of Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, buffaloes live and multiply in Italy, in France, and in other temperate provinces. Those kept in the royal menagerie, have brought forth two or three times; the female has but one at a birth, and goes with young about twelve months, which is another proof of the difference between this species and that of the cow, who only goes nine months. It appears also, that these animals are more gentle and less brutal in their native country, and the warmer the climate the more tractable is their nature. In Egypt they are more tractable than in Italy; and in India more so than in Egypt. Those of Italy have also more hair than those of Egypt, and those of Egypt more than those of India. Their coat is never entirely covered, because they are natives of hot countries; and in general, large animals of these climates have little or no hair.

There are a great number of wild buffaloes in the countries of Africa and India, which are watered by large rivers, and where extensive pasturages are found. The wild buffaloes go in droves and make great havock in cultivated lands, but they never attack the human species, unless they are wounded, and are then very dangerous; for they make directly at their enemy, throw him down, and trample him under their feet. They are, however, greatly terrified at the sight of fire, and are displeased at a red colour. Aldrovandus, Kolbe, and many other naturalists and travellers, assure us, that no person dare wear red cloaths in the country where the buffaloes are.[E] I know not whether this aversion to fire and a red colour be general among the buffaloes: for there are but few among our oxen who grow angry at the sight of red cloaths.

[E] Sonnini says, that he did not perceive the buffaloes of Egypt to be affected in this manner by a red colour, for all the inhabitants of this country wear round their neck and breast a chall of the same colour, without the buffaloes appearing to be affected or irritated.

The buffalo, like all large animals of warm climates, is fond of bathing, and even of remaining in the water; he swims well, and boldly traverses the most rapid floods. As his legs are longer than those of the ox, he runs also quicker. The Negroes of Guinea, and the Indians of Malabar, where the buffaloes are very numerous, often hunt them. They neither pursue nor attack them openly, but climbing up the trees, or hiding themselves in the thickets, which the buffaloes cannot penetrate, on account of their horns, they wait for and kill them. Those people are fond of the flesh of the buffalo, and gain great profit by vending their hides and horns, which are harder and better than those of the ox.

The animal, called, at Congo, Empacassa or Pacassa, though very badly described by travellers, seems to me to be the buffalo; and that which they have spoken of, under the name of Empabunga, or Impalunca, in the same country, may possibly be the bubalus, whose history we shall give with that of the antelope.

SUPPLEMENT.

M. De Querhoent says, that altho’ the bisons invariably differ from the common oxen by the hunch on their backs, and their hair being longer, yet they breed in the Isle of France, and their flesh is preferable to that of European oxen; their hair is also smoother, their legs thinner, and their horns are longer, and after some few generations the hunch entirely disappears. There was one brought to Holland from North America, which was carried about to different towns, by a Swede, in a large cage; this one had an enormous mane round his head, which was not hair, but a very fine wool, divided into locks like a fleece; the skin was of a black colour, excepting on the hunch, where the hair was longer, and under that the skin was rather tawny; and to us this animal seemed to differ from the European by the hunch and wool only.

Bisons are said to have existed formerly in the north of Europe, and Gesner asserts, that even in his time there were some in Scotland; but I have been credibly informed by letters, both from England and Scotland, that not the smallest remembrance of them can be traced in that country. Mr. Bell, in his travels from Russia to China, mentions seeing two species of oxen in the northern parts of Asia, one of which was the aurochs, and the other what we, after Gmelin, have called the Tartarian, or Grunting Cow, which seemed to be of the same species as the bison; and in which we find, by comparison, a perfect coincidence of characters, excepting that the former grunts and the latter bellows.

Although the race of the bisons appear diffused in the Old Continent, from Madagascar and the point of Africa, and from the extent of the East Indies even to Siberia, and that though they are met with in the new continent, from the country of the Ilionois to Louisiana and Mexico, they have never passed the isthmus of Panama, for there are not any bisons in South America, notwithstanding the climate is perfectly agreeable to their nature, and European oxen multiply there as well as in any other place.

The best bulls and cows at Madagascar were brought from Africa, and have a hunch on their backs; but the cows give very little milk. In this island there are wild bisons in the forests, the flesh of which is not so good as that of our oxen. The natives of Agra hunt them on the mountain of Nerwer, in the road from Surat to Golconda, and which is surrounded with wood.

The zebu, as we formerly observed, is the bison as well as the ox in miniature, and though originally a native of warm regions, can nevertheless exist and multiply in temperate ones, for in a letter I received from Mr. Colinson, dated London, December, 1764, he assures me, that the Dukes of Richmond and Portland had several of these animals in their parks, and which brought forth calves every year: they were originally brought from the East Indies. He adds, that the females were much larger than the males, but that the hunch on the back was twice as big on the latter as the former; that the young zebu sucks the mother like other calves, but that in our climate the milk soon dries up, and that it is necessary to have another female to bring them up; that the Duke of Richmond ordered one of them to be killed, when its flesh was found not to be near so good as that of the common ox.

There may also be small oxen without the hunch, which, like the zebu, constitute a particular race; for Careri, in his journey from Ispahan to Schiras, saw two small cows, which had been sent as a present to the king, that did not exceed the size of calves; they were fed entirely upon straw, and yet were very fat.

As to the buffaloes, although they can make but little use of their horns, they are compelled to fight lions and tigers in the Mogul’s country. These animals are numerous in warm and marshy countries, especially near rivers, for water and a moist soil seems to be more necessary to them than a warm climate; there are not any of them therefore in Arabia, where the country is dry. They hunt the wild buffaloes, but with great caution, as they are very dangerous, and when wounded rush at their opponents with great fury.

M. de Querhoënt says, the body of the buffalo, at the Cape of Good Hope, is about the size of our oxen, but his head is larger, and his legs shorter. They generally keep about the edge of the woods; and as he has a bad sight he keeps his head near the ground, and when he observe any disagreeable object near him he makes a sudden dart upon it, making at the same time a most hideous bellowing, and on those occasions it is difficult to escape him; but he is not so much to be feared in the open fields: his hair is commonly red, with a few black spots, and they are often seen together in large flocks.

[THE ZEBU.]

We have already spoken of this little ox under the article buffalo; but as there has been one brought to the royal menagerie since the impression of that article, we can now speak of it with greater exactness, and give an engraving of it done from life. I have also learned, by making new researches, that this small ox, to which I have given the name of zebu, ([fig. 145.]) is very probably the same animal which is called lant, or dant, in Numidia, and in some other northern provinces of Africa, where it is very common, and that the name dant, which can belong to no other animal but this we are treating of, has been transported from Africa into America, and given to an animal which only resembles this by the size of his body, and who belongs to a different species. This dant of America is the tapir, or the maipouri; and in order that it may not be confounded with the dant of Africa, which is our zebu, we shall give the history of it in this volume.

[THE MUFLON, AND OTHER SHEEP.]

The weakest species of useful animals were rendered domestic the earliest of any. The sheep and goat were subjugated before the horse, the ox, or the camel. They were also transported from one climate to another with greater ease; hence the great variety which are to be met with in these species, and the difficulty of recognizing the original breed of each. It is certain, as we have proved, that our domestic sheep, as they at present exist, could not support themselves without the assistance of man; it is, therefore, evident that Nature did not produce them as they at present are, but that they have degenerated under our care; consequently we must search among the wild animals for those which come the nearest to the sheep; we must compare them with the domestic sheep of foreign countries, examine the different causes of the alteration, change, and degeneration, which has had such influence upon the species, and endeavour to restore all these various and pretended species to a primitive race, as we have done in that of the ox.

The sheep, with which we are acquainted, is only to be met with in Europe, and some of the temperate provinces of Asia; if transported into Guinea, it loses its wool, and is covered with hair, it decreases in fertility, and its flesh has no longer the same taste. It cannot subsist in very cold countries, though a breed of sheep is to be found in cold climates; especially in Iceland, who have many horns, short tails, and harsh thick wool, under which, as in almost every animal in the north is a second lining, of a softer, finer, and thicker wool. In warm countries, on the contrary, the sheep have generally short horns and a long tail, some of which are covered with wool, others with hair, and a third kind with a mixture of wool and hair. The first of these sheep of a warm country is that commonly called Barbary sheep, or the Arabian sheep, which resembles the domestic kind, excepting the tail which is so loaded with fat, as to be often more than a foot broad, and weighs upwards of twenty pounds. This sheep has nothing remarkable but his tail which he carries as if a pillow was fastened to his hinder parts. Among this kind of sheep, there are some whose tails are so long and heavy, that the shepherds are obliged to fasten small boards with wheels to them, to enable the animal to walk along. In the Levant, these sheep are cloathed with a very fine wool, while in warm countries, as Madagascar, and the Indies, they are covered with hair. The superabundance of fat, which in our sheep fixes about the kidneys, in these animals descends upon the vertebræ of the tail; the other parts of their body are less charged with it than our fed sheep. This variety is to be attributed to the climate, the food, and the care of men; for these broad, or long-tailed sheep, are domestic like ours, and even demand more care and management. This breed is much more dispersed than the common kind. They are common in Tartary, Persia, Syria, Egypt, Barbary, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and even as far as the Cape of Good Hope.

In the islands of the Archipelago, and chiefly in the island of Candia, there is a breed of domestic sheep, of which Belon has given the figure and description under the name of strepsiceros: this sheep is of the make and size of our common kind; it is like that covered with wool, and only differs from it by the horns, which are erect, and in form of a screw.[F]

[F] Sonnini observes that this race is also very common in Hungary and Austria where it is called zackl.

In short, in the warmest countries of Africa and India, there is a breed of large sheep with rough hair, short horns, hanging ears, and a kind of dewlap under the neck. This sheep, Leo Africanus, and Marmol call adimain, and it is known to the naturalists by the names of the Senegal ram, the Guinea ram, the Angola sheep, &c. He is domestic, like ours, and like him, subject to varieties. The sheep, though they differ in particular characters, resemble each other so much in other respects that we cannot doubt they are of the same kind. Of all domestic sheep, this appears to approach nearest to a state of nature; he is larger, stronger, quicker, and consequently more capable of supporting himself; but as he is only found in the hottest countries, and cannot bear cold, and as he does not exist in his own climate in a wild state, but is domestic and obliged to the care of man for his support we cannot regard him as the primitive breed, from which all the rest have derived their origin.

In considering domestic sheep, therefore, according to the difference of climate, we find, 1. The sheep of the north, who have many horns, and whose wool is coarse. The sheep of Iceland, Gothland, Muscovy, and other parts of the north of Europe, have all coarse hair, and appear to be of the same breed.

2. Our sheep whose wool is very good and fine in the mild climates of Spain and Persia, but in hot countries changes to a rough hair. We have already observed the conformity in the influence of the climates of Spain and Chorazan, a province of Persia, upon the hair of goats, cats, and rabbits; it acts in the same manner upon the wool of sheep, which is very fine in Spain, and still finer in that of Persia.

3. The broad-tailed sheep, whose wool is also very fine in temperate countries, such as Persia, Syria, and Egypt; but which in warm countries, changes into hair more or less coarse.

4. The strepsiceros, or Canadian sheep, who resembles ours both in wool and make, excepting the horns, which are erect, and in the form of a screw.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 139. Mouflon.

FIG. 140. Iceland Ram.

5. The adimain, or great sheep of Senegal and India, which are covered with hair more or less short or coarse according to the heat of the climate. All these sheep are only varieties of the same species, and certainly would produce with each other, since we know from experience that the he goat, whose species is further distant, copulates with our ewes. But though these five or six races of domestic sheep are all varieties of the same species, entirely produced by the difference of climate, treatment, and food, yet none of them appear to be the primitive stock from whence the others sprung; nor is there any of them strong or swift enough either to resist, or avoid, carnivorous animals, by flight. They all equally need care and protection, and must all, therefore, be looked upon as degenerate races, formed by the hands of man, and multiplied for his use. At the same that he fed, cultivated, and increased these domestic races, he neglected, hunted, and destroyed the wild breed, which being stronger and less tractable, would, consequently, be more troublesome, and less useful; they are, therefore, only to be met with in small numbers, and in thinly inhabited places, where they can support themselves. In the mountains of Greece, in the islands of Cyprus, Sardinia, and Corsica, and in the desarts of Tartary, the animal, which we call the muflon ([fig. 139.]), is still to be found, and which in my opinion is the primitive stock of all the varieties of sheep; he lives in a state of nature, and subsists and multiplies without the help of man; he resembles the several kinds of domestic sheep more than any other wild animal; he is more lively, stronger, and swifter, than any of them; his head, forehead, eyes, and face, are like the ram’s; he resembles him also in the form of the horns, and in the whole habit of the body; in short, he produces with the domestic sheep, which alone is sufficient to demonstrate that he is of the same species, and the primitive stock of the different breeds. The only difference betwixt the muflon and our sheep is, that the first is covered with hair instead of wool; but we have already observed, that even in domestic sheep the wool is not an essential character, but a production of temperate climates, since in hot countries these same sheep have no wool, and are all covered with hair; and that, in cold countries, their wool is as coarse as hair. Hence it is not astonishing that the primitive wild sheep, who must have endured cold and heat, have lived and increased without shelter in the woods and deserts should not be covered with wool, which he would soon be deprived of among the thickets; and its nature would, in a short time, be changed by the action of the air, and in temperature of the seasons. Besides, when a he-goat copulates with a domestic ewe, the produce is a kind of muflon, for the lamb is covered with hair, and is not a barren mule, but a mongrel, which returns towards the original species, and which appears to indicate, that the goats and domestic sheep have something in common with their origin; and, as we know by experience, that the he-goat very readily copulates with the ewe, but that the ram is incapable of impregnating the she-goat, it is not to be doubted, that, when these animals are in a domestic state, the goat is the predominant species. Thus our sheep is a species much more degenerated than that of the goat, and there is every reason to believe that if the muflon were brought to the she-goat, instead of a domestic ram, she would produce kids approaching nearer to the species of the goat, as the lambs produced between the he-goat and ewe return nearer to the species of the ram.

I know that naturalists, who have founded their knowledge of Natural History on the distinction of some particular characters, may make some objections to this doctrine, and, therefore, I shall endeavour to anticipate them. The first character of the sheep, they will say, is to be clothed with wool, and that of the goat with hair. The second character of the ram is to have circular horns, which turn backwards, and that of the he-goat is to have them straight and erect. These, they will affirm, are the distinctive and infallible marks by which sheep and goats will always be distinguished; for as to the rest, they cannot avoid acknowledging, they belong to them both in common. Neither have incisive teeth in the upper jaw, but each of them have eight in the lower; both want the canine teeth, and both have cloven feet, simple and permanent horns, teats in the same parts of the belly, both live upon herbage, and ruminate. The internal organization has still a greater resemblance, for it appears to be absolutely the same; the number and form of their stomachs, the disposition of the viscera and intestines, the substance of their flesh, the qualities of the fat and seminal liquor, the time they go with young, and the length of their lives, are perfectly the same. There only remains, then, the wool and the horns, by which these two species can be distinguished; but we have already demonstrated by facts, that wool is not so much a substance of nature as a production of climate, assisted by the care of man. The sheep of hot and cold countries, and those which are wild, have no wool, but hair, while the goats in very mild countries have rather wool than hair, for that of the Angola goat is finer than the wool of our sheep. This character, therefore, is not essential, but purely accidental, and even equivocal, since it equally belongs to, or is deficient, in both species, according to the difference of climate. The character of the horns appears to be still more uncertain; they vary in number, size, form, and direction. In our domestic sheep the rams have commonly horns, and the ewes have none; nevertheless, I have seen in our flocks rams without horns and ewes with them; and sheep not only with two but four horns. The sheep of the North, and of Iceland, ([fig. 140.]) have sometimes even eight. In hot countries the rams have only two very short horns, and often are deficient of them as well as the ewes. In some the horns are smooth and round, in others they are furrowed and flat, and the points instead of turning back, are often bent and come forward, &c. This character, therefore, is not more constant than the first, and consequently, not sufficient to constitute a different species; the largeness of the tail has also been considered, by some naturalists, as an essential distinction, and from the difference in the size of that, the wool, and the horns, they have made seven or eight different species of these animals, which we have reduced to one; and this reduction appears to be so well founded, that we are not afraid of its being contradicted by future observation.

It appeared necessary in composing the History of Wild Animals, to consider them one by one, and independently of genus; but on the contrary, in domestic animals, it appears requisite even to extend the genera; because, in Nature, there only exists individuals, and succession of individuals, that is, species. Men have had no influence on independent animals, but they have greatly altered, modified, and changed domestic ones; therefore, we have made physical and real generas, greatly different from metaphysical and arbitrary ones, which have never existed but in idea. These physical genera, are in reality composed of all the species, which by our management have been modified and changed, and as all these species so differently altered by the hand of man, have but one common and simple origin in nature, the whole genus ought to form but one species. For example, in writing the history of tigers, we have admitted as many species as are found in all the different parts of the world, because, we are certain that man has never subjected, nor changed the species of those untractable animals, which subsist at present such as Nature produced them. It is the same with all other free and independent animals. But in composing the history of oxen and sheep, we have reduced all the first under the species of a single ox; and the latter under that of a single sheep, because, it is also certain, that man, and not Nature, has produced the different kinds which we have enumerated. Every thing concurs to support this idea, which, although clear in itself, may not, perhaps, be sufficiently understood. That all the different oxen produce together, we have demonstrated by the experience of M. de la Nux, and the testimonies of Messrs. Mentzelius and Kalm; that the sheep also produce with one another, with the muflon, and even with the he-goat; I know from my own experience. All the different kinds of oxen, therefore, are no more than one species, and all the sheep but another, however extended the genus of both may be.

I shall never cease to repeat (seeing the importance of the subject) that it is not by trivial particular characters we can judge of Nature, or distinguish the species; that methodical arrangements, far from elucidating the History of Animals, serve but to obscure it by multiplying unnecessary denominations and species; by making arbitrary genera which are not in Nature, and perpetually confounding real beings with imaginary creatures; by giving false ideas of the characteristics of the species, and mixing or separating them without foundation, without knowledge, and often without having seen a single individual. It is hence that our nomenclators constantly deceive themselves, and write almost as many errors as lines. We have already given so many examples of this, that he must be blindly prejudiced indeed, that can in the least doubt them. Monsieur Gmelin speaks very sensibly on this subject, when treating of the animal in question.[G]

[G] Vide Voyage à Kamtschatka, par M. Gmelin.

We are convinced, as M. Gmelin observes, that we cannot acquire a knowledge of Nature, but by making a judicious use of our senses, by reflecting, seeing, comparing, and, at the same time, by rejecting the bold freedom of forming methodical orders, and minute systems, in which animals are classed without the authors having seen them, and of which they are only acquainted with the names; names which are often equivocal, obscure, and misapplied. The wrong use of these names confounds the ideas in vague and indefinite words, and drowns the truth in a torrent of error. We are also convinced, after having compared the living mouflon with the description of M. Gmelin, that the argali is the same animal. We have said they are found in Europe, and in warm countries, such as Greece, the island of Cyprus, Sardinia, and Corsica; nevertheless, they are found also, and in great numbers, in all the mountains of the southern parts of Siberia, under a climate rather cold than temperate, and where they appear even to be bigger, stronger, and more vigorous. He might, therefore, have stocked the north and south parts, and his posterity have become domestic; after having long endured the rigours of this condition, he might have degenerated, taking relative characters, and new habits of body, according to the different climates, and the different treatments he has received; which being afterwards perpetuated by generation, have given rise to our domestic, and all other kinds of sheep, of which we have heretofore spoken.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 141. Barbary Wedder.

FIG. 142. Ram of Tunis.

SUPPLEMENT.

In the year 1774, a ram was exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, as a ram of the Cape of Good Hope; but we found it had been purchased at Tunis, and considered it to be of the same species as the Barbary sheep, (fig. 141.) before mentioned, for it differed only by the head and tail being somewhat more short and thick; yet by way of distinction, we have called it the ram of Tunis. ([fig. 142.]) His legs were shorter than those of our common sheep; he was plentifully clothed with wool, and his horns both in size and shape nearly resembled the Barbary sheep. In the same year, and at the same place, there was also another shewn under the name of the Morvant of China, ([fig. 143.]) which was remarkable for having a sort of mane on his neck, and long hairs hanging down under his throat, which were a mixture of red and grey, and full ten inches long; the mane extended to about the middle of the back, the hairs of which were not so long as those under the throat, were more red, mixed with a few brown and black ones; the wool which covered the other part of the body was rather curled, near three inches long, and of a bright yellow; his legs were red, spotted with yellow, and his tail yellow and white; he was not so high as the common rams, and more resembled the Indian rams than them; he had a very large belly, in appearance like that of an ewe with young, and his horns were like those of the common kind.

From what we have since observed we are the more convinced in our former opinion, that the muflon is the original stock of all other sheep, and that he has a constitution sufficiently strong to live either in cold, temperate, or warm climates. M. Steller says, that the rams of Kamtschatka have the manner of the goat, and the hair of the rein-deer; that some of their horns weigh more than thirty pounds; that they are as active as roe-bucks, and live upon the edges of mountains, that their flesh is good, but they are principally hunted for their skins.

There remain but very few real muflons in Corsica, the many wars in that island having probably been the cause of their destruction, but the present race of sheep still retain a resemblance to them in their figures, as I observed to be the case in one I saw in August, 1774, belonging to the Duc de Vrilliére.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 143. Morvant.

FIG. 144. Axis.

[THE AXIS.]

This animal being only known by the vague names of the hind of Sardinia, and the deer of the Ganges, we have preserved the name given him by Belon, and which he borrowed from Pliny; because, the character of Pliny’s axis agrees with this animal, and the name has never been applied to any other; and, therefore, we are not afraid of falling into confusion or error, for a generic denomination, joined to an epithet derived from the climate, is not a name, but a phrase, by which we may confound one animal with others of his genus, as this with the stag, although, perhaps, it is really distinct both in species and climate. The axis ([fig. 144.]) is one of the small number of ruminating animals who has horns like the stag. He has the shape and swiftness of the fallow-deer. But what distinguishes him from both is, his having the horns of the former, and figure of the latter; his body is marked with white spots,[H] elegantly disposed, and separated one from another; and lastly, he is a native of warm countries;[I] while the stag and fallow-deer have their coats generally of a uniform colour, and are to be met with in greater numbers in cold and temperate regions than in warm climates.

[H] The axis is about the size of the fallow-deer, the ground colour of his body is a greyish yellow beautifully marked with white spots; his belly is white, as is also the under part of his tail, while the upper inclines to red.

[I] I never saw, at Senegal, any stag with horns like those in France. Voyage de le Maire.—There are stags in the peninsula of India, on this side the Ganges, whose bodies are interspersed with white spots. Voyage de la Compagnie des Indes de Hollande.—There are stags at Bengal spotted like tigers. Voyage de Luillier.

The gentlemen of the Academy of Sciences have given the figure and description of the interior parts of this animal, but say very little of his exterior form, and nothing with respect to his history. They have only called him the Sardinian hind, because, probably, they received that name from the royal menagerie, where there is one of them; but there is no proof of this animal’s being a native of Sardinia. No author has mentioned that he exists in that island, as a wild animal; but on the contrary, we see by the passages we have quoted, that he is found in the warmest countries of Asia. Thus the denomination of Sardinian hind, has been falsely applied; that of the Ganges stag agrees best, if he really were of the same species as the stag, since that part of India, which the Ganges waters, appears to be his native country. He is also to be met with in Barbary, and, it is probable, that the spotted fallow-deer of the Cape of Good Hope, is the same animal.

We have already remarked, that no species approaches so near each other, as that of the fallow-deer to the stag: nevertheless, the axis appears to be an intermediate shade between the two. He resembles the fallow-deer in the size of his body, length of his tail, and his coat, which is the same during his whole life: the only essential difference is in his horns, which nearly resemble those of the stag. The axis, therefore, may be only a variety depending on the climate, and not a different species from that of the fallow-deer; for, although he is a native of the warmest countries of Asia, he exists and multiplies easily in Europe. There are many herds of them in the royal menagerie; and they produce together as freely as the fallow-deer. It has never, however, been observed, that they mix either with the fallow-deer, or with the stags, and this is the cause of our presuming, that they are not a variety of one or the other, but a particular and intermediate species. But as no direct and decisive experiments on this subject have yet been made, and as no necessary means has been used to oblige these animals to unite, we will not positively affirm that they are two different species.

We have already seen, under the articles of stag and fallow-deer, how many instances these animals give of varieties, especially in the colour of their hair. The species of the fallow-deer and stag, without being very numerous in individuals, is universally diffused; both are met with in either continent, and both are subject to a great number of varieties, which appear to form lasting kinds. The white stags, which are a very ancient race, since the Greeks and Romans mention them, and the small brown stags, which we have called Corsican stags, are not the only varieties of this species. There is in Germany another race, known in that country by the name of Brandhertz, and by our hunters by that of the Stag of Ardennes. This stag is larger than a common stag, and differs from other stags not only by its deeper colour, being almost black, but also by long hair upon the shoulders and on the throat. This kind of mane and beard give him some affinity, the first to the horse, and the latter to the goat. The ancients have given to this stag the compound names of Hippelaphus and Tragelaphus. As these denominations have occasioned critical discussions, in which the most learned naturalists are not agreed, and as Gesner, Caius, and others, have said, that the hippelaphus was the rein-deer, we shall here give the reasons which have occasioned us to think differently, and have led us to suppose that the hippelaphus of Aristotle is the same animal as the tragelaphus of Pliny, and that both these names equally denote the stag of Ardennes.

Aristotle gives to his hippelaphus a kind of mane upon the neck and upon the upper part of the shoulders, a beard under the throat, horns to the male resembling those of the roe-bucks, and no horns to the female. He says, that the hippelaphus is of the size of a stag, and is found among the Arachotas, a people of India, where wild oxen are also to be met with, whose bodies are robust, their skins black, their muzzles raised, and their horns bent more backwards than those of the domestic oxen. It must be acknowledged, that Aristotle’s characters of the hippelaphus, agree nearly with those of the rein-deer and the stag of Ardennes; they both have long hair upon the neck and shoulders, and also on the throat, which forms a kind of beard on the gullet, and not on the chin; but the hippelaphus, being only of the size of the stag, differs in that from the rein-deer, who is much larger: and what appears to me decisive on the question is, that the rein-deer being an animal belonging to cold countries, never existed among the Arachotas. The country of the Arachotas is one of the provinces which Alexander travelled over in his expedition into India; it is situated beyond Mount Caucasus, between Persia and India. This hot climate never produced any rein-deer, as they cannot exist even in temperate countries, and are only to be met with in the northern regions of both continents. Stags, on the contrary, are not particularly attached to the north, but are to be found in great numbers in warm and temperate climates. Thus we cannot doubt but the hippelaphus of Aristotle, which is met with among the Arachotas, and in the same countries with the buffalo, is the stag of Ardennes, and not the rein-deer.

If we now compare what Pliny says upon the tragelaphus with what Aristotle says upon the hippelaphus, and both with Nature, we shall find, that the tragelaphus is the same animal as the hippelaphus, and therefore the same as our stag of Ardennes. Pliny says, that the tragelaphus is of the stag species,[J] and only differs from him by the beard and the hair on his shoulders. These characters are positive, and can only be applied to the stag of Ardennes; for Pliny speaks elsewhere of the rein-deer under the name of Alcé. We think ourselves, therefore, sufficiently warranted to pronounce, that the tragelaphus of Pliny, and the hippelapus of Aristotle, both denote the animal we call the Stag of Ardennes; and that the axis of Pliny is the animal commonly called the Ganges Stag. Though names have no influence on Nature, yet an explication of them is doing service to those who study her productions.

[J] Eadem est specie (cervi videlicet) barbâ tantum; et armorum villo distans quem tragelaphon vocant non alibi quam juxta Phasius amnem nascens. Pliny. Hist. Lib. viii. c. 33.

SUPPLEMENT.

In a letter I received from Mr. Colinson, in 1765, he informed me that the Duke of Richmond had several of the species of the Ganges Stags, or, as I have called it, Axis, in his park; that they lived familiarly with the fallow-deer, did not form separate herds, but even propagated together, and that from the intermixture beautiful varieties were produced.

There was a male and female Chinese fallow-deer in the royal menagerie in the year 1764; they were above two feet four inches in height; they were dark brown on the body and tail, mixed in several places with large yellow hairs, and yellow on the belly and legs. Though smaller than either the fallow-deer or axis, it was probably only a variety of the latter, and with whom it might intermix and be perpetuated even in France, especially as they are both natives of the eastern regions of Africa.[K]

[K] Sonnini observes, that the snout of the axis is shorter than that of the stag, and his head is nearly as long as that of the fallow-deer.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 145. Zebu.

FIG. 146. Tapir.

[THE TAPIR.]

The Tapir ([fig. 146.]) is the largest animal in America, of that New World, where, as we have before observed, animated Nature seems to be lessened, or rather has not had time to arrive at its full dimensions. In place of the colossal masses, which the ancient lands of Asia produce; instead of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, camel, &c. we only meet in these new countries with animals modelled upon a small scale; the tapir, lama, pacos, and cabiais, are above twenty times smaller than those they should be compared with in the old continent. Matter is not only used here with prodigious parsimony, but even the forms are imperfect, and appear to have failed or been neglected. The animals of South America, which alone properly belong to this new continent, are almost all without tusks, horns, and tails; their figure is grotesque, their bodies and limbs ill proportioned, and some, as the ant-eaters, sloth, &c. are so miserably formed, that they scarcely have the faculties of moving or of eating; with pain they drag on a languishing life in the solitude of a desart, and cannot subsist in the inhabited regions, where man and powerful animals would have soon destroyed them.

The tapir is of the size of a small cow or zebu, but without horns or tail; his legs are short, and his body arched like that of a hog. When young his coat is spotted like that of the stag, and afterwards becomes of an uniform dark brown colour. His head is thick and long, with a kind of trunk like the rhinoceros; he has ten cutting teeth, and ten grinders, in each jaw; a character which separates him entirely from the ox, and other ruminating animals. As we have only some skins of this animal, and a drawing which M. de la Condamine favoured us with, we cannot do better than refer to the descriptions given of him from life, by Marcgrave[L] and Barrere[M], at the same time, subjoining what travellers and historians have said concerning him.

[L] Marcgrave’s Hist. Brasil.

[M] The tapir, or, as he is sometimes called, the Maipouri, is an amphibious animal, being as much in the water as on land; he has very short hair, interspersed with black and white hairs. Nat. Hist. par Barrere.

The tapir appears to be a dull and gloomy animal, who never stirs out but in the night,[N] and delights in the water, where he oftener lives than upon land: he chiefly lives in marshes, and seldom goes far from the borders of rivers or lakes. When alarmed, pursued, or wounded, he plunges into the water, and remains under it until he has passed to a considerable distance. These customs, which he has in common with, the hippopotamus, have made some naturalists imagine him to be of the same species; but they differ as much from each other in nature as the climates are distant which they inhabit. To be assured of this, there needs no more than to compare the descriptions we have recited, with those we have given of the hippopotamus. Although the tapir inhabits the water, he does not feed upon fish; and although his mouth is armed with twenty sharp and incisive teeth, he is not carnivorous. He lives upon plants and roots, and makes no use of his weapons against other animals. He is of a mild and timid nature, and flies from every attack or danger. His legs are short, and his body heavy, but, notwithstanding, he runs very swift, and swims still better than he runs. His skin is of a very firm texture, and so bound together that it often resists a bullet. His flesh is insipid and coarse; nevertheless the Indians eat it. They commonly go in companies, and are found in Brasil, Paraguay, Guiana, and in all the extent of South America, from the extremity of Chili to New Spain.

[N] Sonnini says, that it is true the tapir goes out principally in the night, but he is also to be met with in the day.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 147. Zebra.

FIG. 148. Hippopotamus.

[THE ZEBRA.]

The Zebra ([fig. 146.]) is perhaps the handsomest and most elegant of all quadrupeds. He has the figure and gracefulness of the horse, with the swiftness of the stag. His striped robe of black and white ribbands, is alternately disposed with so much regularity and symmetry, that it seems as if nature had made use of the rule and compass. The alternate bands of black and white, are the more singular, as they are strait, parallel, and as exactly divided, as those of a striped stuff; besides they extend not only over the body, but over the head, thighs, legs, and even the ears and tail; so that, at a distance, this animal appears as if he was adorned with ribbands, disposed in a regular and elegant manner over every part of the body. In the females, these bands are alternately black and white; in the males they are black and yellow; but the shades are always lively and brilliant, upon a short, fine, and thick hair, the lustre of which increases the beauty of the colours. The zebra, in general, is less than the horse, and bigger than the ass. Although he has often been compared to these two animals, by the names of the wild horse and the striped ass, he is a copy of neither, but might rather be called their model, if all were not equally original in Nature, and if every species had not an equal right to creation.

The zebra, then, is neither a horse nor an ass, for we have never learnt that he intermixes with either, though trials have often been made for that purpose. She-asses, when in heat, were presented to the zebra, which was in the menagerie of Versailles, in the year 1761; but he disdained them, or rather, shewed no sign of emotions; he played with, and even mounted on them, but without any external marks of desire; and this coldness could be attributed to no other cause than the disagreement of their natures; for this zebra was then four years of age, and was very lively and alert in every other exercise.

The zebra is not the animal the ancients have mentioned under the name of onagre. In the Levant, in the eastern parts of Asia, and in the north of Africa, there exists a beautiful race of asses, which, like the finest horses, are natives of Arabia. This race differs from the common kind, by the largeness of the body, the slenderness of the legs, and the lustre of the hair. They are of an uniform colour, commonly of a fine mouse grey, with a black cross on the back and shoulders, sometimes they are of a bright grey, with a flaxen cross. These asses of Africa and Asia, although more beautiful than those of Europe, are originally, and equally descended from the onagres, or wild asses, which are still in great plenty in East and South Tartary, Persia, Syria, the islands of the Archipelago, and all Mauritania. The onagres differ from our domestic asses only by the qualities resulting from freedom and independence: they are stronger and swifter, and have more courage and vivacity; the form of their body is the same, but they have longer hair, and this difference varies again according to their condition, for our asses would have hair equally long, if it was not cut off at the age of four or five months. The hair of young asses is at first nearly as long as that of young bears. The hide of the wild ass is also harder than that of the domestic kind, and we are informed that it is covered with small tubercules, and it is even said that the shagreen brought from the Levant, and which we employ for so many purposes, is made of these wild asses skin. But neither the onagres, nor the beautiful asses of Arabia, can be looked upon as the stock of the zebra species, though they resemble them in figure and swiftness. That regular variety of the climate of the zebra has never been exhibited by either of them. This beautiful species is singular, and very distant from any other. The zebra is also of a different climate from the onagre, being only to be met with in the most eastern and southern parts of Africa, from Ethiopia to the Cape of Good Hope, and from thence into Congo. He exists neither in Europe, Asia, America, nor in the northern parts of Africa. Those, which some travellers tell us they saw at the Brasils, had been transported thither from Africa. Others, which have been seen in Persia and in Turkey, have been brought thither from Ethiopia; and, in short, those which we have seen in Europe come almost entirely from the Cape of Good Hope. This point of Africa is their native climate, and where the Dutch have employed all their endeavours to tame and render them domestic, without having hitherto been able to succeed. That which was the subject of this description was very wild when he arrived at the royal menagerie in France, and is not yet entirely tamed; nevertheless, he has been brought to let a man sit on a saddle, but great precaution is necessary, as two men are obliged to hold the bridle while the third is on his back. His mouth is very hard; his ears are so sensible that he winces whenever they are touched. He is restive, like a vicious horse, and obstinate as a mule. But, perhaps, the wild horse, and the onagre, are equally untractable, and, possibly, if the zebra was accustomed to obedience, and to a domestic state, from his earliest days, he might become as gentle as the ass or the horse, and might be substituted in their room.

SUPPLEMENT.

Although the ass is to be met with, either in a wild, or domestic state, in almost every country of the old continent, under a warm or temperate climate, yet there was no such animal in the new, upon its first discovery. They were, however, soon after transported from Europe, and multiplied so fast in America, that they may be said to be equally numerous in the four quarters of the globe; but it is not so with the zebra; he seems confined to the southern parts of Africa, and especially about the Cape of Good Hope, although Lopez has asserted that they are more abundant in Barbary than in Congo, and Dapper says the same in favour of the forests of Angola.

Notwithstanding the superiority this animal maintains over the ass, from the elegance of his figure, and beauty of colours, yet he appears to be somewhat of the same species, for almost all travellers have given it the name of striped ass, from being struck at the first sight with his having a greater resemblance to the ass than the horse; it is not, however, with the common ass that they compared him, but that large and beautiful part of the species we have before alluded to; I am, notwithstanding, inclined to the opinion, that the zebra makes a nearer approach to the species of the horse, as he possesses a similar elegance of figure. In favour of this opinion it has been observed, near the Cape of Good Hope, which appears to be the native country of the zebra, but there are horses spotted on the back and bellies, with yellow, black, red, and blue. We will not, however, pretend to undertake the decision of this question; but as the Dutch have transported a number of these animals to Holland, and even yoked them in the Stadtholder’s chariot, there is some hopes that their nature will soon be clearly exemplified. In Holland there are many judicious naturalists, and, therefore, we cannot suppose they will fail to make these animals unite among themselves, if not with the horse and the ass: for that attempted in the royal menagerie in 1761, was but a single experiment; it is possible, that as the zebra was but four years old he might not have arrived to maturity, at all events he was not rendered familiar with the females presented to him, a circumstance, which seems requisite throughout nature, even in an intercourse with individuals of the same species.

In Tartary they have an animal called czigithai, which possibly is of the same species as the zebra, as the principal difference between them is in the colour; a difference which, we have repeatedly observed, may be occasioned by the varieties of the climates. This czigithai is common in the southern parts of Siberia, Thibet, Dauria, and Tartary. Gerbillan says they are to be met with in the country of the Mongoux and Kakas; that they differ from mules, and cannot be brought to carry burthens. Muller and Gmelin both assert that there are numbers of them in the countries of the Tongusians, who hunt them like other game: that they resemble a bright bay horse, excepting they have long ears, and a tail like a cow. It is probable that if they had compared him with the zebra they would have found a much greater resemblance. In the Petersburgh cabinet there are stuffed skins both of the zebra and czigithai; they differ very much in colour, but yet they may belong to the same, or nearly the same species. Besides there is no other animal in Africa but what is to be found in Asia, and, therefore, if these are different species the zebra alone would stand as an exception to that general rule. If the czigithai does not belong to the zebra species it may possibly be the onagre, or wild ass of Asia; which latter should not by any means be confounded with the zebra. According to all travellers there are various kinds of wild asses, and the onagre is supposed to rank at the head of them. The horse, ass, onagre, and czigithai, may form four distinct species; and if there are but three, it will remain uncertain whether the latter is an onagre or zebra. The onagre is said to exceed the horse in swiftness, and the very same remark is made of the czigithai. Let this particular fact be as it may, the horse, ass, zebra, and czigithai, belong to the same genus, and are only different branches thereof. From the two first being rendered domestic, mankind have received great advantages, and the two last being reduced to a similar state would, no doubt, prove likewise a useful acquisition.

[THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.]

Though the Hippopotamus has been celebrated from the earliest ages; though mentioned in the sacred writings under the name of behemoth, and though his figure is engraved upon the obelisks of Egypt, and on the Roman medals; yet he was but imperfectly known to the ancients. Aristotle scarcely mentions him, and in the little he does say, there are more errors than facts. Pliny copied Aristotle, and far from correcting, adds to the number of his errors. It was only towards the middle of the sixteenth century that we had any precise information concerning this animal; Belon being then at Constantinople, saw a living one; of which, however, he has given but an imperfect representation, for the two figures which he has joined to his description, were not taken from the hippopotamus he has seen, but were copied from the reverse of a medal of the Emperor Adrian, and from the colossus of the Nile at Rome; so that we must carry the epoch of the knowledge of this animal to the year 1603, when Frederico Zerenghi, a surgeon of Narni, in Italy, printed at Naples, the history of two of these animals, which he had killed in Egypt, in a great ditch he had caused to be dug in the environs of the Nile, near Damietta. This little work was written in Italian, and appears to have been neglected by his contemporary and succeeding naturalists; notwithstanding, it is the only good and original one on the subject, and has so strong pretensions to credit, that I shall here give an extract and translation from it.

“With a view of obtaining an hippopotamus, (says Zerenghi) I suborned the people about the Nile, (who had seen two of these animals come from the river) to dig a large pit in the place where they passed over, and to cover it with light wood, earth, and grass. Returning in the evening to the river, they both fell into the pit. The people came immediately and acquainted me with the event, and I hastened thither with my Janissary. We killed both the animals by firing three charges from a large arquebuse into each of their heads. They expired immediately, uttering a doleful cry, which more resembled the bellowing of a buffalo, than the neighing of a horse. This exploit was performed on the 20th of July, 1600. The following day I had them drawn out of the pit, and skinned with care; the one was a male and the other a female. I had both the skins salted, and filled with the leaves of the sugar cane, in order to transport them to Cairo, where I had them salted a second time with greater attention and more convenience. In doing of which we used near 400lbs. of salt to each skin. At my return from Egypt, in 1601, I brought these skins to Venice, and from thence to Rome. I shewed them to many learned physicians. Doctor Jerome Aquapendente and the celebrated Aldrovandus, were the only persons who knew them to be the skins of the hippopotamus; and as the work of Aldrovandus was then printing, he had (with my consent) a figure drawn from the skin of the female, which he has given with his book.

“The hippopotamus has a very thick and hard skin; it is impenetrable, unless it be soaked some time in water: the mouth is not, as the ancients have said, of a moderate size, but enormously large; neither are his feet as they say, divided into two hoofs, but into four. His size is not that of an ass, for he is much bigger than the largest horse, or buffalo; he has not a tail like that of the hog, but rather that of the tortoise, except being incomparably larger; his mouth or nose is not elevated, but resembles that of the buffalo, and is much larger; he has no mane like the horse, but only some short hairs; he does not neigh like the horse, but his voice is between the bellowing of the buffalo, and the neighing of the former. His teeth do not jut out of his mouth, for when it is shut, the teeth, although extremely large, are all hid under the lips. The inhabitants of this part of Egypt call him foras l’bar, which signifies a sea-horse. Belon is much deceived in his description of this animal, he attributes to him teeth like those of a horse, which would induce me to think he had never seen him, although, as he tells us he had, for the teeth of the hippopotamus are very large and very singular. To clear up every doubt and uncertainty, continues Zerenghi, I have here given the figure of the female hippopotamus; every proportion has been taken exactly after nature, as well as the measure of its body and limbs.

“The length of this hippopotamus, from the extremity of the upper lip to the beginning of the tail, is nearly eleven feet two inches.[O]

[O] This measurement is according, to Paris feet and inches.

“The circumference of the body is about ten feet.

“The height, from the bottom of the foot to the top of the back, is four feet five inches.

“The circumference of the legs near the shoulders is two feet nine inches; and taken lower, is one foot nine inches and a half.

“The height of the legs, from the bottom of the feet to the breast, is one foot ten inches and a half.

“The length of the feet, from the extremity of the nails, is about four inches and a half.—Note. I have taken the medium measure between the two that Zerenghi gives, for the length of the feet.

“The nails are as long as they are broad, being rather more than two inches.

“There is one nail on each toe, and four toes on each foot.

“The skin upon the back is nearly an inch, and that upon the belly about half an inch thick.

“The skin is so hard when dried, that it cannot be pierced by a musket shot. The people of the country make great shields of it, and cut it into thongs or kind of whips. On the surface of the skin there are a few very fine hairs of a greyish colour, and which cannot be perceived at first sight; on the neck there are some longer, but they are all placed one by one, more or less distant from each other; but on the lips they form a kind of mustachio: for there springs out ten or twelve of them from the same points; these hairs are of the same colour as the rest, they are only harder, thicker, and somewhat longer, though the longest is not more than half an inch.

“The length of the tail is rather more than eleven inches, and its circumference, taken at the beginning, is something more than a foot, and at its extremity, is two inches and upwards.

“The tail is not round, but from the middle to the end is flat, like an eel. Upon the tail and the thighs, there are some round scales of a whitish colour, broad as a French bean; these small scales are also seen upon the breast, the neck, and upon some parts of the head.

“The head, from the extremity of the lips to the beginning of the neck, is two feet four inches, and its circumference about five feet eight inches.

“The ears are two inches and near an half long, more than two inches in breadth, are a little pointed, and furnished on the inside with thick, short, and fine hairs, of the same colour as the others.

“The space between each angle of the eyes is two inches and upwards, and from one eyelid to the other, is one inch and one line.

“The nostrils are two inches four lines long, and little more than one inch broad.

“The mouth, when open, measures about one foot six inches; it is of a square form, and furnished with forty-four teeth of different shapes. All these teeth are so hard, that they strike fire with steel. The enamel of the canine teeth in particular, have this hardness; the interior substance being not so hard. When the hippopotamus keeps his mouth shut there are no teeth to be seen, for the lips, which are extremely large, completely cover them.

“In respect to the figure of this animal, it may be said to be constructed between that of the buffalo and hog, because it participates of both, except the incisive teeth, which have no resemblance to those of either of these animals. The grinders are a little like those of the buffalo or horse, but much larger. The colour of the body is dark and blackish. It is affirmed that the hippopotamus produces but one young at a birth; that he lives on fish, crocodiles, and even the flesh of dead bodies; however, he eats rice, grain, &c. though on considering his teeth, we should conclude that Nature had not made him for grazing, but for the destruction of other animals.”

Zerenghi finishes his description by affirming that all the above measures were taken from the female hippopotamus, whom the male perfectly resembled, excepting that he was a third bigger in all his dimensions. It were to be wished that the figure given by Zerenghi had been as good as his description; but the drawing was not taken while this animal was living, but from the skin of the female. It appears also, that it was from this same skin preserved in salt, that Fabius Columna designed his figure; but the description Columna has given, is not so good as that of Zerenghi’s, and he must be reproached for only quoting the name and not a word about the work of this author, though published three years before his own: he must also be accused of swerving from his description in many essential points, without giving any reason for it; for example, Columna says, that in his time, in 1603, Frederico Zerenghi brought from Egypt to Italy an hippopotamus preserved in salt, while Zerenghi himself says, he brought only the skin. Columna also gives to his hippopotamus thirteen feet in length, to the circumference fourteen, and the legs three feet and a half long; while the measures of Zerenghi makes the length of the body but eleven feet two inches, the circumference ten, and the legs one foot ten inches and a half, &c. We must not, therefore, rely on the description of Columna; nor excuse him upon the supposition that he took it from another subject; for it is evident, from his own words, that he made it from the smallest of Zerenghi’s two hippopotami; since he acknowledges that some months after Zerenghi shewed a second hippopotamus much larger than the first. What makes me so strenuous on this point is, that no one has rendered justice to Zerenghi, who, notwithstanding, is the only person who deserves eulogiums on this subject. On the contrary, every naturalist, for this hundred and sixty years, have attributed to Fabius Columna what they should have given to Zerenghi; and instead of searching for the work of the last they have set down contented with copying and applauding that of Columna’s, who, however deserving of praise in other respects is, upon this, neither original, exact, nor even honest.

The description and figures of the hippopotamus that Prosper Alpinus published more than a hundred years after, are still worse than those of Columna, having been drawn from skins but badly preserved; and M. de Jussieu, who wrote of the hippopotamus in 1724, has only described the skeleton of the head and feet.

By comparing these descriptions, and especially that of Zerenghi, with the information we have drawn from travellers, the hippopotamus appears to be an animal whose body is longer and as thick as that of the rhinoceros; that his legs are much shorter; that his head is not so long, but larger in proportion to his body: that he has no horns, either on the nose like the rhinoceros, or on the head like the ruminating animals. His cry when hurt, according to ancient and modern travellers, resembles the neighing of a horse and the bellowing of the buffalo; his usual voice may be like the neighing of a horse, from which, however, he differs in every other respect. If thus be the fact, we may presume that this resemblance in the voice has been the reason for giving him the name of hippopotamus, which signifies the river horse, as the howling of the lynx, which resembles that of the wolf, occasioned him to be called the lupus cervarius. The cutting teeth of the hippopotamus, and especially the two canine of the lower jaw, are very long, and so hard and strong that they strike fire with a piece of steel. This is probably what, gave rise to the fable of the ancients, that the hippopotamus vomited fire: these canine teeth are so white, so clean, and so hard, that they are preferable to ivory for making artificial teeth. The cutting teeth, especially those of the lower jaw, are very long, cylindrical and furrowed; the canine teeth are also very long, crooked, prismatic, and sharp, like the tusks of a boar: the grinders are square, or rather oblong, nearly like those of a man, and so large that a single one weighs more than three pounds; the largest of the cutting, and the canine teeth are twelve and even sixteen inches in length, and sometimes weigh twelve or thirteen pounds each.

In short, to give a just idea of the size of the hippopotamus we shall make use of Zerenghi’s measures, increasing them one third, because his measures were taken from the female, who was one third less than the male in all her dimensions. This male hippopotamus was consequently sixteen feet nine inches long, from the extremity of the muzzle to the beginning of the tail; fifteen feet in circumference, and six feet and a half in height; his legs were about two feet ten inches long; the length of the head three feet and a half, and eight feet and a half in circumference ; the width of the mouth two feet four inches, and the largest teeth more than a foot long.

Thus powerfully armed, and with such prodigious strength of body, he might render himself formidable to every animal; but he is naturally gentle, and is besides so heavy and slow that he could not outrun any other quadruped. He swims quicker than he runs, pursues the fish, and makes them his prey. He delights much in the water, and lives in it as freely as upon land, yet he has no membranes between his toes like the beaver and otter, and it is plain, that the great ease with which he swims is owing to the great capacity of his body, which makes his specific gravity nearly equal to the water. Besides, he remains a long time under water, and walks at the bottom as well as in the open air; and when he quits it to graze upon land he eats sugar-canes, rushes, millet, rice, roots, &c. of which he consumes great quantities, and does much injury to cultivated lands; but as he is more timid on land than in the water he is very easily driven away, and his legs are so short that he cannot save himself by flight, if he be far from any water. His resource, when in danger, is to plunge into the water, and proceed under it to a great distance before he reappears. He commonly retreats from his pursuers, when hunted, but if wounded he becomes irritated, and faces about with great fury, rushes against the boats, seizes them with his teeth, tears pieces off, and sometimes sinks them. “I have seen, says a traveller,[P] an hippopotamus open his mouth, fix one tooth on the gunnel of a boat, and another on the second plank under the keel (that is at least four feet distant), pierce the side through and through, and in this manner sink the boat. I have seen one lying by the side of the sea-shore, upon whom the waves tossed a Dutch boat heavily laden, and then retreating left it dry on his back, and which was afterwards carried off again by another wave, without the animal appearing to have received the least injury. I could not discover the exact arrangement of his teeth, but they appear to form the figure of a bow, and were about sixteen inches long. We fired several times at one of them, but the shot rebounded from his skin. The natives consider him as a kind of deity, and that he cannot be destroyed, and frequently declare, if they were to use him as we do he would soon be the destruction of their nets and canoes. When they go a fishing in their canoes, and meet with an hippopotamus, they throw fish to him, and then he passes on without disturbing their fishery any more. He does the most injury when he can rest himself against the earth, but when he floats in the water he can only bite. Once, when our boat lay near the shore, I saw one of them get underneath, lift her above water upon his back, and overset her with six men aboard, but fortunately they received no hurt.”——“We dare not, says another traveller, irritate the hippopotamus in the water, since an adventure that had nearly proved fatal to three men; they had proceeded in a small canoe to attack one in a river where there was about ten feet water; they discovered him walking at the bottom, according to his usual custom, and wounded him with a long lance, upon which he rose immediately to the surface of the water, looked at them with a dreadful aspect, and, at one bite, took a great piece out of the side of the canoe, which had very nearly overturned it, and it was with difficulty they could make the shore.” These two examples are sufficient to give an idea of the strength of these animals; and a number of like facts are to be met with in the General History of Voyages, by the Abbé Prevost, who has given a summary of whatever travellers have reported concerning the hippopotamus.

[P] Dampier, vol. II.

These animals are not numerous, except in particular places, and it even appears that they are confined to the rivers of Africa. The greatest part of naturalists have said, that the hippopotamus is to be found also in the Indies, but the evidence they have of this circumstance is very equivocal; the most positive would be that of Alexander, in his letter to Aristotle, if we could assure ourselves, that the animals of which Alexander speaks, were really hippopotami. What occasions me to have some doubts on this head is, that Aristotle, in describing the hippopotamus in his history of animals, must have said, that they were natives of India, as well as Egypt, if he had thought that the animal, of which Alexander speaks in his letter, had been the true hippopotamus. Onesicritus, and some other authors, say the hippopotamus is to be found in the river Indus, but modern travellers, at least those who merit most confidence, have not confirmed this fact; they all agree, that this animal is found in the Nile, the Senegal, or Niger, the Gambia, the Zara, and other great rivers and lakes of Africa, especially in the southern and eastern parts. Father Boyn is the only one who seems to insinuate that the hippopotamus is to be met with in Asia, but his recital appears suspicious, and I think only proves that he is common in Mosambique, and all the eastern parts of Africa. At present the hippopotamus, which is called the Nile-horse, is so rare in the lower Nile, that the inhabitants of Egypt have no idea of the name. He is equally unknown in all the northern parts of Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Bamboo river, which flows at the foot of Mount Atlas; the climate which the hippopotamus actually inhabits, therefore extends only from Senegal to Ethiopia, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.

As most authors have called the hippopotamus the sea-horse, or sea-cow, it has sometimes been confounded with the latter, which is a very different animal, and which only inhabits the northern seas. It appear, then, to be certain, that the hippopotami, which the author of the description of Muscovy says are found upon the borders of the sea of Petzora, are no other than sea-cows, and Aldrovandus merits reproach for adopting this opinion without examination, and asserting that the hippopotamus is found in the northern seas: for he not only does not inhabit the north seas, but it appears that he is rarely found in those of the south. The testimonies of Odoardus, Barbossa, and Edward Wotton, recounted by Aldrovandus, and which seem to prove that the hippopotamus inhabits the Indian seas, appear to be almost as equivocal as that in the description of Muscovy; and I am inclined to believe that the hippopotamus is not to be found, at least at present, but in the greatest rivers of Africa. Kolbe, who says, he has seen many of them at the Cape of Good Hope, affirms, that they equally plunge themselves into the sea and rivers, and which is asserted by other authors. Although Kolbe appears to be more exact than common in his description of the hippopotamus, yet it is doubtful whether he saw it so often as he says, since the figure he has joined to his description is worse than those of Columna, Aldrovandus, and Prosper Alpinus, which are all drawn from stuffed skins. It is easy to discover that the figures and description in Kolbe’s works, have neither been made on the spot, nor taken from Nature. His descriptions are written from memory, and most of the figures been copied from those of other naturalists; the figure which he gives of the hippopotamus, in particular, bears a great resemblance to the cheropotamus of Prosper Alpinus.

Kolbe, therefore, in affirming, that the hippopotamus lives in the sea, might possibly have copied Pliny, and not spoken from his own observations. Most other authors tell us, that this animal is only to be found in the fresh water lakes and in rivers, sometimes at their mouths, but oftener at a great distance from the sea. There are even travellers, who, like Merollo, are surprised, that the hippopotamus should have been called the sea-horse, because, say they, this animal cannot bear salt water. He commonly remains all day under water, and only quits it at night to graze upon land. The male and female rarely separate. Zerenghi caught both male and female the same day, and in the same ditch. Dutch travellers say, that they bring forth three or four young at a time, but this fact appears to me very suspicious from the evidence which Zerenghi has mentioned. Besides, as the hippopotamus is of an enormous bulk, he is in the class of the elephant, rhinoceros, whale, and all other large animals, who bring forth but one at a time; and this analogy appears to me more certain than all the suppositious testimonies of different travellers.

SUPPLEMENT.

I have been informed by Mr. Bruce that in his travels through Africa he frequently saw hippopotami in Lake Tzana, in Upper Abyssinia, near the sources of the Nile; that in this lake these animals are more numerous than in any other part of the world, and that he saw some which were at least twenty feet in length.

Dr. Klockner, in his translation of the present work, printed at Amsterdam, says, he is surprised that M. de Buffon should have taken no notice of a passage in Diodorus Siculus, respecting the hippopotamus, in which that author observes, “that among the various animals produced by the Nile, the crocodile and hippopotamus deserve the most particular attention; the latter is five cubits long; he has cloven feet like ruminating animals, and in each of his jaws he has three large tusks, somewhat like those of a wild boar; while the prodigious size of his body resembles that of an elephant. His skin is exceedingly hard and strong, possibly more so than that of any other animal. He is amphibious, and remains as perfectly at ease under water as upon land; he, however, comes on shore in the night to seek pasture, and if the species were numerous, they would prove very destructive to the cultivated lands of Egypt. To hunt this animal a number of men assemble, and going in several boats attack him; when once fastened to a rope, they leave him till he is exhausted with plunging and the loss of blood: his flesh is hard, and not good for digestion.” Dr. Klockner has also given an account of the manner in which the skin was prepared of the one sent from the Cape of Good Hope, and is now in the Prince of Orange’s cabinet, the dimensions of which corresponded very nearly with those of Zerenghi’s. He likewise adds, that he was informed by the nephew of Charles Marias, a peasant of French extraction, who shot this hippopotamus, and from whom he had the relation, that the animal had wandered a considerable way upon land, almost to a place called the Mountains of Snow; this Marias asserted that the hippopotamus runs very swift upon land, and for which reason these peasants, though good hunters, never attempted to attack him but when he was in the water; that it was the practice to watch for him about sun-set, at which time he raises his head above water, and perceiving any object of prey, darts upon it with surprising quickness; during his thus floating on the surface, he keeps his ears in perpetual motion, constantly listening if any noise is near, and while in this position the hunters endeavour to shoot him in the head; when wounded he plunges under the water and traverses about as long as life remains, and then floats to the top; some of the party swim to him, and being fastened by ropes he is dragged on shore by oxen, where he is immediately dissected. A full grown hippopotamus generally yields about 2000 lbs. weight of fat, which is salted and sent to the Cape, where it is much esteemed and sells very dear. By compression a mild oil is drawn from it, which in Africa is considered as a certain remedy for diseases in the breast.

In our preceding description of this animal we remarked, that it was probable the hippopotamus was so called from his voice having a resemblance to the neighing of a horse, but from many authentic accounts, we understand that it comes nearer to the cry of the elephant, or the indistinct stammerings of persons who are deaf. When asleep he also makes a snorting noise by which his retreat is discovered at a distance; and of this he seems aware, as he generally lies among reeds upon marshy grounds, and where it is very difficult to come near him.

I cannot consider the remark of Marias, relative to the speed of this animal, as correct; since so far from its being corroborated, all others affirm that the hunters rather attack him on land than in the water, which is a proof they are not afraid of his swiftness; nay, some affirm that it is customary to impede his return by trees and ditches, from his constantly endeavouring to regain the water, where he has no enemy to apprehend, as both crocodiles and sharks carefully avoid him.

As we before observed, his skin is so extremely hard on his back, &c. that neither arrows nor musket balls can pierce it, but it is thinner on the belly and insides of the thighs, at which parts therefore the hunters constantly aim. They sometimes endeavour to break his leg with large blunderbusses, and if they succeed in that their conquest is certain. The negroes who do not hesitate to attack the sharks and crocodiles, commonly avoid the hippopotamus, and would probably never dare to encounter him, but from a presumption that if they fail he cannot overtake them; those of Angola, Congo, Elmina, and the western coasts of Africa, consider him as an inferior deity, but yet they feel no repugnance in devouring his flesh when they can procure it with safety.

The female brings forth among the rushes upon land, but she soon teaches her young to take refuge in the water, and which they do on the smallest alarm. P. Labat asserts, that this animal has sufficient intelligence to let himself blood when he feels a necessity, and that he performs the operation by rubbing a particular part of his skin against a sharp-pointed rock, and that when he thinks he has bled enough he rolls himself in the mud until he has stopped the wound; and it has also been affirmed that the Indian painters make use of his blood as one of their colours.

Engraved for Barr’s Buffon

FIG. 150. Rein-Deer.

FIG. 149. Elk.

[THE ELK AND THE REIN-DEER.]

Although the Elk ([fig. 149.]) and the Rein-deer ([fig. 150.]) are animals of different species, we shall treat of them together, because it is scarcely possible to write the history of the one without borrowing a great deal from the other. The greatest part of ancient, and even modern authors, have confounded them, or described them by equivocal denominations which might be applied to both. The Greeks had no knowledge either of the elk or the rein-deer, for Aristotle makes no mention of them; and, among the Latins, Julius Cæsar is the first who has made use of the word Alce. Pausanias, who wrote above a hundred years after Julius Cæsar, is also the first Greek author who takes notice of this name of [Greek: Alchê]; and Pliny, who was nearly contemporary with Pausanias, has very obscurely indicated the elk and the rein-deer under the names alce, machlis, and tarandus. We cannot, therefore, say, that the name alce, is properly Greek or Latin; it seems to have been derived from the Celtic tongue, in which the elk is named elch or elk. The Latin name of the rein-deer is still more uncertain; many naturalists have thought that this was the machlis of Pliny, because this author, in speaking of the animals of the north, quotes, at the same time, the alce and the machlis, and says that the last particularly belongs to Scandinavia, and was never seen at Rome, nor even in all the extent of the Roman empire. Nevertheless, we find in Cæsar’s Commentaries a passage that we can scarcely apply to any other animal than the rein-deer, and which seems to prove, that he existed at that time in the forests of Germany; and fifteen centuries after Julius Cæsar, Gaston Phœbus seems to speak of the rein-deer under the name of the rangier, as an animal which existed in his time in our forests of France: he even gives a tolerable description of this animal[Q], and of the method of taking and hunting him. As his description cannot be applied to the elk, and as he gives, at the same time, the manner of hunting the stag, the fallow-deer, the wild goat, the chamois goat, &c. it cannot be supposed, that under the article of the rangier he intended to speak of any of those animals, or that he was deceived in the application of the name.

[Q] The Rangier is very much like the stag, but has considerably larger horns: when he is very much pressed in the chace he puts his hind parts against a tree, and bends his head to the ground, in which situation he is perfectly secure, as his horns completely defend his whole body, and the dogs are afraid to approach him. He is not higher than the fallow-deer, but more bulky; he is hunted with dogs, but he is more commonly shot with arrows, or taken in snares. He feeds in the same manner as the stag and fallow-deer, and lives to a great age. La Venerie de Jacques Dufouilloux.

It appears, then, from these positive testimonies, that the rein-deer formerly existed in France, at least in the mountainous parts, such as the Pyrennees, near which Gaston Phœbus dwelt as lord of the county of Foix, and that since his time they had been destroyed like the stags, who were heretofore common in this country. It is certain that the rein-deer is now to be found only in the most northern countries; but we also know, that the climate of France was formerly much more damp and cold, occasioned by the number of woods and morasses, which have since been cut down and drained. By the letter of the Emperor Julian, we learn what was the rigour of cold at Paris in his time: the description he gives of the ice on the Seine perfectly resembles what the Canadians say of the ice on the rivers of Quebec. Gaul, under the same latitude as Canada, was, two thousand years ago, what Canada is at present; that is to say, a climate cold enough for these animals to live in, which are now only to be met with in the regions of the north.

By comparing and combining the above testimonies, it appears to me, that the forests of Gaul and Germany were stocked with elks and rein-deer, and that the passages in Cæsar’s Commentaries, can only be applied to those two animals. As the land was cultivated, and the waters became gradually dried up, the temperature of the climate became more mild, and those animals, who delight in cold, immediately abandoned the flat countries, and retired into the snowy region, where they lived in the time of Gaston de Foix; and if they are no longer to be found there, it is because this temperature has been ever since increasing in heat by the almost entire destruction of the forests, by the successive lowering of the mountains, the diminution of the waters, the multiplication of mankind, and by the continual increase of culture, and every other improvement. I am likewise of opinion that Pliny has borrowed from Cæsar almost all he has written of these two animals, and that he was the first author of the confusion in their names. He mentions at the same time the alce and the machlis, from which we ought naturally to conclude, that these two names mean two different animals: however, if we remark, 1. That he only simply names the alce without any description whatever. 2. That he alone has used the name machlis, which word is not to be found in either Greek or Latin, but appears to be coined, and which, according to Pliny’s commentators, is changed into that of alce in many ancient manuscripts. 3. That he attributes to the machlis all what Julius Cæsar gives to the alce; we cannot doubt but the passage in Pliny is corrupted, and that these two names mean the same animal, namely, the elk. This question once decided will also decide another. The machlis being the elk, the tarandus must be the rein-deer. This name of tarandus is not to be found in any author before Pliny, and in the interpretation of which, authors have greatly varied; however, Agricola and Elliot have not hesitated to apply it to the rein-deer; and for the reasons just deduced, we subscribe to their opinion. Besides, we must not be surprised at the silence of the Greeks on the subject of these two animals, nor at the ambiguity with which the Latins have spoken of them, since the northern climates were absolutely strangers to the first, and only known to the second by relation.

The elk is only found on this, and the rein-deer on the other, side of the polar circle in Europe and in Asia. We find them in America, in the lower latitudes, because the cold is greater there than in Europe. The rein-deer can bear the most excessive cold; he is found in Spitsbergen; he is common in Greenland, and in the most northern parts of Lapland and Asia. The elk does not approach so near the pole; he inhabits Norway, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and all the provinces of Siberia and Tartary, even to the north of China. We meet with him under the name of Orignal, and the rein-deer under that of Caribou in Canada, and in all the northern parts of America. Those naturalists, who doubted whether the Orignal was the elk, and the Caribou the rein-deer, had not compared Nature with the testimonies of travellers. These are certainly the same animals, though like all the rest in the New Continent smaller than those in the Old.

We may form a more perfect idea of the elk and rein-deer, by comparing them with the stag; the elk is taller, thicker, and stands more erect upon his legs; his neck is shorter, his hair longer, and his antlers wider and heavier than those of the stag. The rein-deer is shorter, his legs are smaller and thicker, and his feet much larger; his hair is very thickly furnished, and his horns much longer and divided into a great number of branches, with flat terminations; while those of the elk appear to have been cut or broached at the edges. Both have long hair under the neck, short tails, and ears much longer than those of the stag; they do not leap nor bound like the roe-buck, but their pace is a kind of trot, so easy and quick, that they go over almost as much ground in the same time, without being in the least fatigued; for they will sometimes continue their trot for two days together, without resting. The rein-deer lives upon the mountains; and the elk dwells in low lands and damp forests; both go in herds like the stags, and both can be tamed, but the rein-deer with greater ease than the elk. The last, like the stag, has never lost his liberty, while the rein-deer has been rendered domestic by the most unenlightened part of mankind. The Laplanders have no other cattle. In this icy climate, which receives only the oblique rays of the sun, where the night and the day comprehend two seasons; where the snow covers the earth from the beginning of autumn to the end of spring, and where the verdure of the summer consists in the bramble, juniper, and moss, where could man expect to procure necessary nourishment for cattle? The horse, the ox, the sheep, and all the other useful animals, could not find subsistence there, nor resist the rigour of the cold; it was therefore necessary to search among the inhabitants of the forest for the least wild and profitable animals; the Laplanders have done what we should be obliged to do ourselves if we were to lose our cattle; we should then be forced to tame the stags, and the roe-bucks of our forests to supply their place; this I am persuaded, we should easily accomplish, and soon derive as much advantage from them as the Laplanders do from their rein-deer. This example ought to make us sensible how far Nature has extended her liberality towards us; we do not make use of one half her treasure, for her bounty is more immeasurable than we can imagine; she has bestowed on us the horse, the ox, the sheep, and all other domestic animals, to serve, to feed, and clothe us; and she has other species in reserve, which would ably supply the deficiency, and which only require us to subdue, and make them useful to our wants. Man is not acquainted with the powers of Nature, nor how far her productions are to be improved by the exertions of his capacity; instead of exploring her unknown treasures, he is constantly abusing those with which he is acquainted.

By comparing the advantages which the Laplanders derive from the rein-deer with those we experience from the domestic animals, we shall see that he is worth two or three of them. He is used as a horse to draw sledges and carriages; he travels with great speed and swiftness, travelling thirty leagues a day with ease, and runs with as much certainty on frozen snows as upon the mossy down. The female affords milk more substantial and nourishing than that of the cow. The flesh is excellent food. His hair makes an exceeding good fur, and his hide makes a very supple and durable leather. Thus the rein-deer alone affords all that we derive from the horse, the ox, and the sheep.

The manner in which the Laplanders rear and train these animals deserves our particular attention. Olaus, Schæffer, and Regnard, have given interesting details on this subject, of which the following is an abstract: The horns of the rein-deer, say these authors, are larger and divided into a greater number of branches than those of the stag. The food of this animal, in the winter season, is a white moss, which he finds under the deepest snow, and which he ploughs up with his horns, or digs up with his feet. In summer he lives upon the buds and leaves of trees in preference to herbs, which his forward spreading horns will not permit him to brouze on with facility. He runs upon the snow and sinks but little, by reason of his broad feet. These animals are very mild, and are kept in herds, which turn out greatly to the profit of their owners; the milk, hide, sinews, bones, hoofs, horns, hair, and the flesh, are all useful and good. The richest Laplanders have herds of four or five hundred, and the poorest have ten or twelve. They are led out to pasture, and shut up in inclosures during the night, to shelter them from the outrages of the wolves. If taken to another climate they die in a short time. Many centuries since, Steno, prince of Sweden, sent six to Frederic, duke of Holstein; and more recently, in 1533, Gustavus, king of Sweden, sent ten over to Prussia, both males and females; but they all perished, without producing either in a domestic or free state. “I would fain (says M. Regnard) have brought some rein-deer alive into France; many persons have in vain attempted it, and last year three or four were conducted to Dantzic, where they soon died, not being able to bear the heat of that climate.”

There are both wild and tame rein-deer in Lapland. In the rutting season the females are let loose to seek the wild males in the woods; and as these wild males are more robust, and stronger than the domestic ones, the breed from this mixture are preferred for harness. These rein-deer are not so gentle as the others, for they not only sometimes refuse to obey those who guide them, but often turn and furiously attack them with their feet, so that they have no other resource than to cover themselves with the sledge until the fury of the beast is subsided. This sledge is so light that the Laplander can with ease turn it over himself; the bottom of it is covered with the skins of young rein-deers, the hair of which is turned backwards, so that the sledge glides easily forwards, and is prevented from recoiling on the mountains. The harness of the rein-deer is only a collar made of the skin, with the hairs remaining on it, from whence a trace is brought under the belly, between the legs, and fastened to the fore part of the sledge. The Laplander has only a single cord, as a rein, fastened to the animal’s horn, which he throws sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other of the beast, according as he would direct him to the right or left. They can travel four or five leagues an hour; but the quicker he goes the more inconvenient is the motion, and a person must be well accustomed, and travel often, to be able to sit in the sledge, and prevent it from turning over.

The rein-deer have outwardly many things in common with the stag, and the formation of their interior parts is nearly the same. From this conformity of Nature, analogous customs and similar effects result. The rein-deer sheds his horns every year like the stag, and, like him, makes very good venison. The rutting season of both is towards the end of September. The females of both species go eight months with young, and produce but one at a birth. The males have the same disgustful smell in their rutting time; and among the female rein-deer there are also found some who are barren. The young rein-deer, like the young fawns of the stag, are variously coloured; it is at first of a reddish colour, and becomes, as they grow old, almost of an entire brown. The young follow their mothers two or three years, and they do not attain their full growth till the age of four; it is at this age that they begin to dress and exercise them for labour. In order to render them more manageable they are castrated when young, which operation the Laplanders perform with their teeth. The uncastrated males are very difficult to manage, and they therefore make use only of those which are gelded, among which they choose the most lively and nimble to draw their sledges, and the more heavy to carry their provisions and baggage. They keep only one stallion rein-deer for five or six females. These animals are troubled with an insect, called the gad-fly, who burrowing under their skins deposit their eggs, so that sometimes by the end of winter the worms that proceed from them render their skins as full of holes as a sieve.

The herds of rein-deer require a great deal of care; they are subject to elope, and voluntarily strive to regain their natural liberty: they must be closely attended, and narrowly watched, and never led to pasture but in open places; and in case the herd is numerous they have need of many persons to keep them together, and to run after those which attempt to stray. They are all marked, that they may be known again, for it often happens that they stray in the woods, or mix with other herds. In short, the Laplanders are continually occupied in the care of their rein-deer, which constitute all their wealth, and they know well how to procure every convenience, or, more properly, all the necessities of life, from these animals. In the winter season they cloath themselves from head to foot with the furs of the rein-deer, which are impenetrable to frost or rain; and in summer they make use of the hides from which the fur has fallen off. They also spin the hair, and cover the sinews which they take from the body of the dead animal, for cordage and thread. They eat the flesh, drink the milk, and of the latter they also make very rich cheese. This milk, when churned, gives, instead of butter, a kind of suet. This particularly, as well as the largeness of the horns, and the plenty of fat he affords at the beginning of the rutting season, are so many proofs of the superabundance of nourishment; and what still more strongly proves his superabundance to be excessive, or at least greater than any other species, is that the rein-deer is the only animal where the female has horns as well as the male, and this last is the only one also who sheds his horns and renews them even when castrated. For in stags, fallow-deer, and roe-bucks, who have undergone this operation, the horns of the animal remain always in the same state they were at the moment of castration. Thus the rein-deer is, of all animals, that in which the superfluity of nutritive matter is the most apparent, and this, perhaps, is less owing to the nature of the animal than to the quality of its food, for the white moss, which is his only aliment during the winter, is a lichen, whose substance resembles that of the mushroom; it is very nourishing, and is more loaded with organic molecules, than the leaves or buds of trees, and it is for this reason that the rein-deer has larger horns, and affords more fat than the stag; and that the females, and those that are castrated, are not deprived of horns: it is the cause also of the great variety that is found in the size of the horns, and of the figure and number of the branches, beyond what is possessed by any other of the deer kind. The males who had been neither hunted nor confined, and who feed amply, and at pleasure, on this substantial aliment, have prodigious large horns, which extend backward as far as the crupper, and forwards beyond the muzzle. Those which are gelded have smaller horns, yet much larger than the stag, and those of the females are still less. Thus the horns of the rein-deer, differ not only, like others, according to age, but also according to sex and castration. The horns, therefore, are so exceedingly different in individuals, that it is not to be wondered at that authors have differed so much upon this subject.

Another singularity, which is common to the rein-deer and the elk, we must not omit. When these animals run, their hoofs at every step make a crackling noise, as if all their limbs were disjointed; and it is this noise, or perhaps the scent, which informs the wolves of their approach, who way-lay them, and if the wolves are many in number, they will attack and kill him; for the rein-deer is able to defend himself against a single wolf, not, as may be imagined, with his horns, for they are rather of disservice than of use, but with his fore-feet, which are very strong, and with which he strikes the wolf with such force, as to stun, or drive him away; after which he flies with such speed as to be no longer in danger of being overtaken. He has a more dangerous, though a less numerous, and a less frequent enemy, in the rosomack, or glutton; this animal is more voracious, but heavier than the wolf; he does not pursue the rein-deer, but conceals himself in a tree, and waits the arrival of his prey; as soon as the rein-deer comes within his reach, he darts upon him, fastens himself with his nails upon his back, and tearing his head or neck with his teeth, never quits his place till he has killed him. He makes the like attacks, and uses the stratagems to conquer the elk, who is stronger than the rein-deer. This rosomack, or glutton of the north, is the same animal as the carcajou or quincajou, of North America; his battles with the orignal are celebrated; and, as we have formerly said, the orignal of Canada is the same as the elk of Europe. It is singular, that this animal, who is scarce bigger than a badger, is able to conquer an elk, whose size exceeds that of a horse, and whose strength is so great, that with a single stroke of his foot he can kill a wolf. But it is attested by so many authorities, that we cannot have the least doubt of its being the fact.

The elk and rein-deer are both ruminating animals, as their method of feeding, and the formation of their interior parts demonstrate; nevertheless, Tornæus Scheffer, Regnard, Hulden, and others, have affirmed, that the rein-deer does not ruminate. Ray justly declares this to be incredible; and, in fact, the rein-deer does ruminate like every other animal who has many stomachs. A domestic rein-deer does not live more than fifteen or sixteen years, but it must be presumed, that his life is of a longer duration in a wild state; for this animal being four years before he arrives at his full growth, ought to live twenty-eight or thirty years when in his natural state. The Laplanders hunt the wild rein-deers by different methods, according to the difference of seasons. In the rutting season they make use of their domestic females to attract the wild males. They shoot them with the musket, or with the bow, and they deliver their arrows with such strength, that notwithstanding the thickness of their hair and hide, they often kill one of these beasts with a single arrow.