Delineations of the Ox Tribe: The Natural History of Bulls, Bisons, and Buffaloes.: Exhibiting all the Known Species and the More Remarkable Varieties of the Genus Bos.Vasey, George
Science
Delineations of the Ox Tribe: The Natural History of Bulls, Bisons, and Buffaloes.: Exhibiting all the Known Species and the More Remarkable Varieties of the Genus Bos.
Vasey, George
American bison; Buffaloes; Cattle; Oxen
In the instance in which I had an opportunity of witnessing their method
of receiving visitors, the fashion was somewhat different. The
park-keeper who accompanied me described, as we rode through the park in
quest of them, what would be their mode of procedure on our approach.
This he did from observations so repeatedly made, as to warrant him in
saying that it was their invariable mode. It was perfectly simple, and I
found it precisely as he had described it. When we came in sight of
them, they were tranquilly ruminating under a clump of shady trees, some
of the herd standing, others lying. On their first observing us, those
that were lying rose up, and they all then began to move _slowly_ away,
not exactly to a greater distance from us, but in the direction of a
thickly wooded part of the park, which was as distant on our left as the
herd was on our right. To reach this wooded part they had to pass over
some elevated ground. They continued to walk at a gradually accelerating
pace, till they gained the most elevated part, when they broke out into
a trot, then into a canter, which at last gave way to a full gallop, a
sort of "devil-take-the-hindmost" race, by which they speedily buried
themselves in the thickest recesses of the wood. What they may have done
in Mr. Culley's time, we must take upon that gentleman's word; but at
present, and for so long as the present park-keeper can recollect, they
have never been in the habit of describing those curious concentric
circles of which Mr. Culley makes mention in the last quotation.
The late mode of killing them is described as "perhaps the only modern
remains of the grandeur of ancient hunting. On notice being given, that
a wild bull would be killed on a certain day, the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood came mounted and armed with guns, &c., sometimes to the
amount of a hundred horse, and four or five hundred foot, who stood upon
walls or got into trees, while the horsemen rode off the bull from the
rest of the herd until he stood at bay, when a marksman dismounted and
shot. At some of these huntings twenty or thirty shots have been fired
before he was subdued. On these occasions the bleeding victim grew
desperately furious, from the smarting of his wounds, and the shouts of
savage joy that were echoing from every side. But from the number of
accidents that happened, this dangerous mode has been little practised
of late years, the park-keeper alone generally shooting them with a
rifled gun at one shot."
This vivid portraiture of a scene, which the writer is pleased to
consider _grand_, does not appear to have much relation to the history
of the _Genus Bos_: it however, exhibits the brutal and ferocious habits
of two varieties of _Genus Homo_, namely _Nob_ility and _Mob_ility--two
varieties which, although distinguished by some external marks of
difference, possess in common many questionable characteristics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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