Photo by the Duchess of Bedford] [Woburn Abbey.
YOUNG BULL MUSK-OX.
The musk-ox is nearly allied to the sheep. It is about the size of Highland cattle, and inhabits Arctic America and Northern Greenland.
It will be seen from the above accounts of the whole wild bovine race that they all exhibit in a high degree many of the traits which are seen in domesticated animals of the same tribe. The chief differences made by man's selection and breeding affect the form of the body and the development of the udder, otherwise there is no great modification, except the production of the drooping ear in some of the Indian species of domesticated oxen. No wild cattle have the level, flat back and rectangular body which mark all the best shorthorns and other breeds intended for beef. In the Asiatic and Galla humped breeds, the races which first domesticated the original wild species seem to have used the long processes of the vertebræ which cause the back of many wild cattle to form a hump as the basis of a valuable feature, the hump becoming as it were another joint of meat. The development of the udder has for untold centuries been the object of the breeders of cows; consequently we find that in the domesticated races this has become abnormally large. There is at present a very general tendency to get rid of the horns among all breeds of high quality, as these appendages cause much loss by wounds inflicted by cattle upon each other; but even in this respect sentiment rather tends to preserve the horns as an ornament in some of the best milking breeds, such as the Jerseys.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SHEEP AND GOATS.
THE SHEEP.