It is probable that the first use which was made of beasts of burden, in ways in which their strength became useful to man, was in packing the tents and other valuables of their masters as they moved from place to place. Even to this day in certain parts of the world bulls and oxen serve for such purposes. In fact the nomadic life, a fashion of society which is enforced wherever people subsist from their cattle alone, leads inevitably to such use of the beasts. In the southern Appalachian district of this country there remain traces of this service rendered by bulls and oxen. These creatures, provided with a kind of pack saddle, are occasionally used in conveying the dried roots of the ginseng, beeswax, feathers, and the peltries which are gathered by the inhabitants of remote districts, 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.