Domesticated animals and plants; a Domesticated animals and plants; a brief treatise upon the origin and development of domesticated races, with special reference to the methods of improvement domesticatedan00dave Year: 1910 ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 223 Asia. Africa also possesses several distinct species of true buffalo, notably the cape buffalo of the south, — with horns much like those of the musk ox, — the Sierra Leone buffalo, and the small red or short-horned species of the western coast region. In extinct forms of large size Africa is peculiarly rich. If accounts may be believed
Domesticated animals and plants; a Domesticated animals and plants; a brief treatise upon the origin and development of domesticated races, with special reference to the methods of improvement domesticatedan00dave Year: 1910 ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 223 Asia. Africa also possesses several distinct species of true buffalo, notably the cape buffalo of the south, — with horns much like those of the musk ox, — the Sierra Leone buffalo, and the small red or short-horned species of the western coast region. In extinct forms of large size Africa is peculiarly rich. If accounts may be believed, the horn cores of one specimen from Algeria measured no less than eleven feet and another from the cape fourteen feet. As they would be considerably larger when covered with their horny sheath, the spread of the horns and the size of these animals must have been truly prodigious. Fig. 42. Sir Donald, head of the largest herd of bisons in America Canadian National Park, Banff, Alberta It will be seen, therefore, that the domesticated cattle of both Asia and Africa have no lack of wild relatives both living and extinct, and the fact of their ultimate origin in the wild must be clear to the most casual student, — so clear that if the domes- ticated races should suddenly become extinct, they, or equally good successors, could be readily restored from the wild. However this may be in the western continent, all closely related species were extinct in America, if, indeed, they ever existed, long before its discovery by the white man. The bison {Bos americaniis), popularly but erroneously called the buffalo, a close relative of the European bison {Bos bonassus), was the
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