icts, not accessible
to carriages, to the markets of the outer world. All the varieties of
ordinary cattle could be made to serve as burden-carriers, and they
doubtless would be continued to be used for saddle purposes in one
way or another but for the wide use of the horse, a creature very
much better adapted for carrying weight. The cloven foot of the bulls
and buffaloes gives a weakness to the extremities which will quickly
lead to disease in case they are forced to carry heavy loads such
as the horse or ass may safely bear.

[Illustration: Ploughing in Syria]

The help which our bovine servants afford us by the power which they
exert in traction, as in drawing ploughs, sleds, or wagons, appears to
have been first rendered long after their introduction to the ways of
man. The first of these uses in which the drawing strength of these
animals was made serviceable appears to have been in the work of
ploughing. In primitive days and with primitive tools, hand delving
was a sore task. The inventive genius who first contrived to overturn
the earth by means of the forked limb of a tree, shaped in the
semblance of a plough and drawn by oxen, began a great revolution in
the art of agriculture. To this unknown genius we may award a place
among the benefactors of mankind, quite as distinguished as that which
is occupied by the equally unknown inventors of the arts of making fire
or of smelting ores. After the experience with the strength of oxen had
been won from the work of ploughing, it was easy to pass to the other
grades of their employment, where they were made to draw carriages.

Next after the contribution which the kindred of the bulls, have made
by their strength, we must set that which has come from their milk.
Although this substance can be obtained in small quantities from
several other domesticated animals, the species of the genus Bos alone
have yielded it in sufficient quantities greatly to affect the
development of man. It is difficult to measure the importance of the
addition to the diet, both of savage and civilized peoples, which milk
affords. It is a fact well known to physiologists that in its simple
form this substance is a complete food, capable when taken alone of
sustaining life and insuring a full development of the body. It is
indeed a natural contrivance exactly adapted to afford those materials
which are required for the development and restoration of creatures
essentially akin to our own specie