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

by comte de Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon

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.