The long rains in summer are not suddenly absorbed by the rays of the sun: a thick veil defends the ground when it is in the zenith, or near it, affording heat to promote vegetation without withering it by destroying the moisture, and by this means a never-failing store of provender is constantly provided for all sorts of cattle. Of the tame or cow-kind, great abundance present themselves everywhere, differing in size, some having horns of various dimensions; some without horns at all, differing also in the colour and length of their hair, by having bosses upon their backs, according as their pasture or climate varies. There are kinds also destined to various uses; some for carriage, like mules or asses, some to be rode upon like horses; and these are not the largest of that kind, but generally below the middle size. As for that species bearing the monstrous horns, of which I have often spoke in my narrative, their size is not to be estimated by that of their horns; the animal itself is not near so big as a common English cow; the growth of the horn is a disease which proves fatal to them, because encouraged for a peculiar purpose. Whether it would be otherwise curable, has not yet, I believe, been ever ascertained by experiment. But the reader may with confidence assure himself, that there are no such animals as carnivorous bulls in Africa, and that this story has been invented for no other purpose but a desire to exhibit an animal worthy of wearing these prodigious horns. I have always wished that this article, and some others of early date, were blotted out of our philosophical transactions; they are absurdities to be forgiven to infant physic and to early travels, but they are unworthy of standing among the cautious, well-supported narratives of our present philosophers. Though we may say of the buffaloe that it is of this kind, yet we cannot call it a tame animal here; so far from that, it is the most ferocious in the country where he resides; this, however, is not in the high temperate part of Abyssinia, but in the sultry Kolla, or valleys below, where, without hiding himself, as wild beasts generally do, as if conscious, of superiority of strength, he lyes at his ease among large spreading shady trees near the clearest and deepest rivers, or the largest stagnant pools of the purest water. Notwithstanding this, he is in his person as dirty and slovenly as he is fierce, brutal, and indocile; he seems to maintain among his own kind the same character for manners that the wolf does among the carnivorous tribe.