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These, at first, were accidental, but in time became hereditary; and a new race of artificial

purposes of human pleasure than their own convenience. In short, their very appetites may be changed; and those that feed only upon grass may be rendered carnivorous. I have seen a sheep that would eat flesh, and a horse that was fond of oysters.

ciety ceases among the inferior tenants of the plain; their union against him can yield them no protection, and their cunning is but weak-monsters are propagated, rather to answer the ness. In their fellow-brutes, they have an enemy whom they can oppose with an equality of advantage; they can oppose fraud or swiftness to force, or numbers to invasion; but what can be done against such an enemy as man, who finds them out though unseen; and though remote, destroys them? Wherever he comes, all the contests among the mearer ranks seem to be at an end, or are carried on only by surprise. Such as he has thought proper to protect, have calmly submitted to his protection; such as he has found it convenient to destroy, carry on an unequal war, and their numbers are every day decreasing.

The wild animal is subject to few alterations; and, in a state of savage nature, continues for ages the same, in size, shape, and colour. But it is otherwise when subdued, and taken under the protection of man; its external form, and even its internal structure, are altered by human assiduity; and this is one of the first and greatest causes of the variety that we see among the several quadrupeds of the same species. Man appears to have changed the very nature of domestic animals, by cultivation and care. A domestic animal is a slave that seems to have few other desires but such as man is willing to allow it. Humble, patient, resigned, and attentive, it fills up the duties of its station; ready for labour, and content with subsistence.

But not their appetites, or their figure alone, but their very dispositions, and their natural sagacity, are altered by the vicinity of man. In those countries where men have seldom intruded, some animals have been found, established in a kind of civil state of society. Remote from the tyranny of man, they seem to have a spirit of mutual benevolence, and mutual friendship. The beavers, in those distant solitudes, are known to build like architects, and rule like citizens. The habitations that these have been seen to erect, exceed the houses of the human inhabitants of the same country, both in neatness and convenience. But as soon as man intrudes upon their society, they seem impressed with the terrors of their inferior situation, their spirit of society ceases, the bond is dissolved, and every animal looks for safety in solitude, and there tries all its little industry to shift only for itself.

Next to human influence, the climate seems to have the strongest effects both upon the nature and the form of quadrupeds. As in man we have seen some alterations produced by the Almost all domestic animals seem to bear the variety of his situation; so in the lower ranks, marks of servitude strong upon them. All the that are more subject to variation, the influence varieties in their colour, all the fineness and of climate is more readily perceived. As these length of their hair, together with the depending are more nearly attached to the earth, and in a length of their ears, seem to have arisen from a manner connected to the soil; as they have long continuance of domestic slavery.-What an none of the arts of shielding off the inclemency immense variety is there to be found in the ordi- of the weather, or softening the rigours of the nary race of dogs and horses! the principal dif- sun, they are consequently more changed by its ferences of which have been effected by the in- variations. In general it may be remarked, that dustry of man, so adapting the food, the treatment, the colder the country, the larger and the warmer the labour, and the climate, that Nature seems is the fur of each animal; it being wisely proalmost to have forgotten her original design; vided by Nature, that the inhabitant should be and the tame animal no longer bears any resem-adapted to the rigours of its situation. Thus the blance to its ancestors in the woods around him. fox and wolf, which in temperate climates have In this manner, nature is under a kind of con- | but short hair, have a fine long fur in the frozen straint, in those animals we have taught to live regions near the pole. On the contrary, those in a state of servitude near us. The savage ani- dogs which with us have long hair, when carried mals preserve the marks of their first formation; to Guinea or Angola, in a short time cast their their colours are generally the same; a rough thick covering, and assume a lighter dress, and dusky brown, or a tawny, seem almost their only one more adapted to the warmth of the country. varieties. But it is otherwise in the tame; their The beaver and the ermine, which are found in colours are various, and their forms different the greatest plenty in the cold regions, are refrom each other. The nature of the climate in-markable for the warmth and delicacy of their deed operates upon all; but more particularly on these. That nourishment which is prepared by the hand of man, not adapted to their appetites, but to suit his own convenience; that climate, the rigours of which he can soften; and that employment to which they are sometimes assigned; produce a number of distinctions that are not to be found among the savage animals.

furs; while the elephant and the rhinoceros, that are natives of the line, have scarcely any hair. Not but that human industry can, in some measure, co-operate with, or repress, the effects of climate in this particular. It is well known what alterations are produced, by proper care, in the sheep's fleece, in different parts of our country; and the same industry is pursued with a like

success in Syria, where many of their animals | the fact is certain, that while America exceeds are clothed with a long and beautiful hair, which they take care to improve, as they work it into that stuff called camlet, so well known in different parts of Europe.

us in the size of its reptiles of all kinds, it is far inferior in its quadruped productions. Thus, for instance, the largest animal of that country is the tapir, which can by no means be compared to the elephant of Africa. Its beasts of prey, also, are divested of that strength and courage which is so dangerous in this part of the world. The American lion, tiger, and leopard, if such diminutive creatures deserve these names, are neither so fierce nor so valiant as those of Africa and Asia. The tiger of Bengal has been seen to measure twelve feet in length, without including the tail: whereas the American tiger seldom exceeds three. This difference obtains still more in the other animals of that country, so that some have been of opinion that all quadrupeds in South America are of a different species from those most resembling them in the old world; and that there are none which are common to both, but such as have entered America by the north; and which, being able to bear the rigours of the frozen pole, have travelled from the ancient continent, by that passage, into the new. Thus the bear, the wolf, the elk, the stag, the fox, and the beaver, are known to the inhabitants as well of North America as of Russia; while most of the various kinds to the southward, in both continents, bear no resemblance to each other. Upon the whole, such as peculiarly belong to the new continent are without any marks of the quadruped perfection. They are almost wholly destitute of the power of defence; they have neither formidable teeth, horns, nor tail; their figure is awkward, and their limbs ill proportioned. Some among them, such as the ant-bear and the sloth, appear so miserably deformed, as scarcely to have the power of moving and eating. They seemingly drag out a miserable and languid existence in the most desert solitude; and would quickly have been destroyed in a country where there were inhabitants, or pow

The disposition of the animal seems also not less marked by the climate than the figure. The same causes that seem to have rendered the human inhabitants of the rigorous climates savage and ignorant, have also operated upon their animals. Both at the line and the pole, the wild quadrupeds are fierce and untameable. In these latitudes, their savage dispositions having not been quelled by any efforts from man, and being still farther stimulated by the severity of the weather, they continue fierce and untractable. Most of the attempts which have hitherto been made to tame the wild beasts brought home from the pole or the equator, have proved ineffectual. They are gentle and harmless enough while young; but as they grow up, they acquire their natural ferocity, and snap at the hand that feeds them. It may indeed, in general, be asserted, that in all countries where the men are most barbarous, the beasts are most fierce and cruel; and this is but a natural consequence of the struggle between man and the more savage animals of the forest; for in proportion as he is weak and timid, they must be bold and intrusive; in proportion as his dominion is but feebly supported, their rapacity must be more obnoxious. In the extensive countries, therefore, lying round the pole, or beneath the line, the quadrupeds are fierce and formidable. Africa has ever been remarked for the brutality of its men, and the fierceness of its animals: its lions and its leopards are not less terrible than its crocodiles and its serpents; their dispositions seem entirely marked with the rigours of the climate, and being bred in an extreme of heat, they show a peculiar ferocity, that neither the force of man can conquer, nor his arts allay. However, it is happy for the wretched inhabitants of those climates, that its most formi-erful beasts to oppose them. dable animals are all solitary ones; that they have not learned the art of uniting, to oppress mankind; but each depending on its own strength, invades without any assistant.

The food also is another cause of the variety which we find among quadrupeds of the same kind. Thus the beasts which feed in the valley are generally larger than those which glean a scanty subsistence on the mountain. Such as live in the warm climates, where the plants are *much larger and more succulent than with us, are equally remarkable for their bulk. The ox fed on the plains of Indostan, is much larger than that which is more hardily maintained on the side of the Alps. The deserts of Africa, where the plants are extremely nourishing, produce the largest and fiercest animals; and, perhaps for a contrary reason, America is found not to produce such large animals as are seen in the ancient continent. But, whatever be the reason,

But if the quadrupeds of the new continent be less, they are found in much greater abundance; for it is a rule that obtains through nature, that the smallest animals multiply the fastest. The goat, imported from Europe to South America, soon begins to degenerate; but as it grows less it becomes more prolific; and, instead of one kid at a time, or two at the most, it generally produces five, and sometimes more. What there is in the food, or the climate, that produces this change, we have not been able to learn; we might be apt to ascribe it to the heat, but that on the African coast, where it is still hotter, this rule does not obtain; for the goat, instead of degenerating there, seems rather to improve.

However, the rule is general among all quadrupeds, that those which are large and formidable produce but few at a time; while such as are

4 Buffon.

mean and contemptible are extremely prolific. | The lion, or tiger, have seldom above two cubs at a litter; while the cat, that is of a similar nature, is usually seen to have five or six. In this manner the lower tribes become extremely numerous; and, but for this surprising fecundity, from their natural weakness they would quickly be extirpated. The breed of mice, for instance, would have long since been blotted from the earth, were the mouse as slow in production as the elephant. But it has been wisely provided, that such animals as can make but little resistance, should at least have a means of repairing the destruction, which they must often suffer, by their quick reproduction; that they should increase even among enemies, and multiply under the hand of the destroyer. On the other hand, | it has as wisely been ordered by Providence, that the larger kinds should produce but slowly; otherwise, as they require proportional supplies from nature, they would quickly consume their own store; and, of consequence, many of them would soon perish through want; so that life would thus be given without the necessary means of subsistence. In a word, Providence has most wisely balanced the strength of the great against the weakness of the little. Since it was necessary that some should be great and others mean, since it was expedient that some should live upon

others, it has assisted the weakness of one by granting it fruitfulness; and diminished the number of the other by infecundity.

In consequence of this provision, the larger creatures, which bring forth few at a time, seldom begin to generate till they have nearly acquired their full growth. On the contrary, those which bring many, reproduce before they have arrived at half their natural size. Thus the horse and the bull are nearly at their best before they begin to breed; the hog and the rabbit scarcely leave the teat before they become parents in turn. Almost all animals likewise continue the time of their pregnancy in proportion to their size. The mare continues eleven months with foal, the cow nine, the wolf five, and the bitch nine weeks. In all, the intermediate litters are the most fruitful; the first and the last generally producing the fewest in number, and the worst of the kind.5

Whatever be the natural disposition of animals at other times, they all acquire new courage when they consider themselves as defending their young. No terrors can then drive them from the post of duty; the mildest begin to exert their little force, and resist the most formidable enemy. Where resistance is hopeless, they then incur every danger, in order to rescue their young by flight, and retard their own expedition by providing for their little ones. When the female

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to hide the place of her retreat from the male; who otherwise, when pressed by hunger, would be apt to devour her cubs. She seldom, therefore, strays far from the den, and never approaches it while he is in view, nor visits him again till her young are capable of providing for themselves. Such animals as are of tender constitutions take the utmost care to provide a place of warmth, as well as safety, for their young; the rapacious kinds bring forth in the thickest woods; those that chew the cud, with the various tribes of the vermin kind, choose some hiding place in the neighbourhood of man. Some dig holes in the ground; some choose the hollow of a tree; and all the amphibious kinds bring up their young near the water, and accustom them betimes to their proper element.

oppossum, an animal of America, is pursued, she | kinds, the female takes the utmost precautions instantly takes her young into a false belly, with which nature has supplied her, and carries them off, or dies in the endeavour. I have been lately assured of a she-fox, which, when hunted, took her cub in her mouth, and run for several miles without quitting it until at last she was forced to leave it behind, upon the approach of a mastiff, as she ran through a farmer's yard. But, if at this period the mildest animals acquire new fierceness, how formidable must those be that subsist by rapine! At such times, no obstacles can stop their ravage, nor no threats can terrify; the lioness then seems more hardy than even the lion himself. She attacks men and beasts indiscriminately, and carries all she can overcome reeking to her cubs, whom she thus early accustoms to slaughter. Milk, in the carnivorous animals, is much more sparing than in others; and it may be for this reason that all such carry home their prey alive, that, in feeding their young, its blood may supply the deficiencies of nature, and serve instead of that milk with which they are so sparingly supplied.

Thus Nature seems kindly careful for the protection of the meanest of her creatures; but there is one class of quadrupeds that seems entirely left to chance, that no parent stands forth to protect, nor no instructor leads, to teach the arts of subsistence. These are the quadrupeds that are brought forth from the egg, such as the lizard, the tortoise, and the crocodile. The fecundity of all other animals compared with these is sterility itself. These bring forth above two hundred at a time; but, as the offspring is more numerous, the parental care is less exerted. Thus the numerous brood of eggs are, without farther solicitude, buried in the warm sands of the shore, and the heat of the sun alone is left to bring them to perfection. To this perfection they arrive almost as soon as disengaged from the shell. Most of them, without any other guide than instinct, immediately make to the water. In their passage thither, they have numberless enemies to fear. The birds of prey that haunt

Nature, that has thus given them courage to defend their young, has given them instinct to choose the proper times of copulation, so as to bring forth when the provision suited to each kind is to be found in the greatest plenty. The wolf, for instance, couples in November, so that the time of pregnancy continuing five months, it may have its young in April. The mare, who goes eleven months, admits the horse in summer, in order to foal about the beginning of May. On the contrary, those animals which lay up provisions for the winter, such as the beaver and the marmotte, couple in the latter end of autumn, so as to have their young about January, against which season they have provided a very comfortable store. These seasons for coupling, how-the shore, the beasts that accidentally come there, ever, among some of the domestic kinds, are generally in consequence of the quantity of provisions with which they are at any time supplied. Thus we may, by feeding any of these animals, and keeping off the rigour of the climate, make them breed whenever we please. In this manner those contrive who produce lambs all the year round.

The choice of situation in bringing forth is also very remarkable. In most of the rapacious

and even the animals that give them birth, are known, with a strange rapacity, to thin their numbers as well as the rest.

But it is kindly ordered by Providence, that these animals which are mostly noxious, should thus have many destroyers; were it not for this, by their extreme fecundity, they would soon overrun the earth, and cumber all our plains with deformity.

BOOK II.

ANIMALS OF THE HORSE KIND.1

CHAP. I.

OF THE HORSE.2

ANIMALS of the horse kind deserve a place next to man, in a history of nature. Their activity, their strength, their usefulness, and their beauty, all contribute to render them the principal ob

jects of our curiosity and care; a race of creatures in whose welfare we are interested next to our own.

Of all the quadruped animals the horse seems the most beautiful, the noble largeness of his form, the glossy smoothness of his skin, the graceful ease of his motions, and the exact symmetry of his shape, have taught us to regard him as the first, and as the most perfectly formed; and yet, what is extraordinary enough, if we examine him internally, his structure will be found the most different from that of man of all other quadrupeds whatsoever. As the ape approaches us the nearest in internal conformation, so the horse is the most remote; a striking proof that there may be oppositions of beauty, and that all grace is not to be referred to one standard.

To have an idea of this noble animal in his native simplicity, we are not to look for him in the pastures or the stables to which he has been consigned by man; but in those wild and extensive plains where he has been originally produced; where he ranges without control, and riots in all other extinct species of animals, are really of a disjudging from analogy, we are warranted in supposing them to be so. There is so little difference in the bones of this genus, that the most skilful osteologists are unable, from them, to determine the species, which they can distinguish with ease and certainty in almost every other animal.-ED.

1 The genus equus, or horse, contains six species, agreeing in their essential characters, which are thus defined by Cuvier in his Regne Animal:' Incisory teeth, six in the upper jaw, and six in the under; two canines, one above and one below, on each side of the cutting or incisory teeth, (the females of some of the species with no canine teeth,) and six cheek teeth, or grinders, on each side, on both jaws; they are furrowed on both sides with flat crowns and several ridges of enamel. Between the canines and cheek teeth is a void space; the upper lip is susceptible of considerable motion; the eyes are large; the pupil oblong-ovate, placed laterally; their sight excellent, and although not formed for seeing in the night, they can distinguish objects very clearly in the dark ears rather small, pointed, and erect, having great mobility in the external conch, so that their hearing is very acute, and is the sense which, in all probability, they possess in the greatest perfec-tinct species from any that at present exist; but, tion; feet, with a single apparent toe, covered with a thick hoof; the tail is furnished with long hair, or with a tuft at the extremity; mammæ two, inguinal; the stomach is simple and membranaceous, and the intestines and cæcum very large. This genus forms a very natural, though isolated, division in the class mammalia. Its characters are so distinct, that it cannot be grouped with any other genus. This is strongly exemplified by the different places the genus has occupied in the arrangements of authors; to none of which it had the slightest alliance. In the Linnæan arrangement, it is placed with the hippopotamus, as a genus of the order belluæ. The method of Erxleben, ranks it between the elephant and dromedary. Storr made a distinct order of it, to follow the ruminantia, under the name solipedes, which was followed by Baron Cuvier in his first edition of the Regne Animal.' It has been subsequently placed by Cuvier in the ninth genus of his sixth order, called pachydermata. The following are the great French naturalist's characteristics of this order:-Skin very thick, whence the name of the order; some of the genera are partially without teeth, others with the three sorts of teeth; quadrupedal, generally with hoofs, and the toes varying in number; stomach simple, and they do not ruminate; without clavicles, or collar-bones. They are either herbivorous or omniverous, and their habits are various. They generally inhabit the temperate and torrid

zones.

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The species of this genus are six: namely, the horse, ass, common zebra, the zebra of the plains, the quagga, the dziggtai, with the mule, which may be regarded as a sub-species. It is not possible to determine whether the fossil bones of horses, which are found, in strata, associated with the bones of

2 As it may happen, that, in a description where it is the aim rather to insert what is not usually known, than all that is known, some of the more obvious particulars may be omitted; I will take leave to subjoin in the notes the characteristic marks of each animal, as given us by Linnæus. "The horse, with six cutting teeth before, and single hoofed; a native of Europe and the East (but I rather believe of Africa); a generous, proud, and strong animal; fit either for the draught, the course, or the road; he is delighted with woods; he takes care of his hinder parts; defends himself from the flies with his tail; scratches his fellow; defends his young; calls by neighing; sleeps after night-fall; fights by kicking, and by biting also; rolls on the ground when he sweats; eats the grass closer than the ox; distributes the seed by dunging; wants a gall bladder; never vomits; the foal is produced with the feet stretched out; he is injured by being struck on the ear; upon the stiffle; by being caught by the nose in barnacles; by having his teeth rubbed with tallow; by the herb padus; by the herb phalandria; by the cruculio; by the conops. His diseases are different in different countries. A consumption of the ethmoid bones of the nose, called the glanders, is with us the most infectious and fatal. He eats hemlock without injury. The mare goes with foal 290 days. placenta is not fixed. He acquires not the canine teeth till the age of five years."—Note by Goldsmith. 3 Histoire Naturelle, Daubenton, vol. vii. p. 374.

The

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