[Illustration: THE BRAHMIN BULL, IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, REGENT'S PARK.]
The Zoological Society possess several _Zebus_, or Indian oxen. These
were formerly considered a distinct species, but zoologists are now of
opinion that the Zebu is merely a variety of the common ox, "although,"
as Mr. Bennett observes, "it is difficult to ascertain the causes by
which the distinctive characters of the two races have been in the
process of time gradually produced."[1] Their anatomical structure is
precisely the same, and the only circumstances in which the two animals
differ consist in the fatty hump on the shoulders of the Zebu, and in
the somewhat more slender and delicate make of its legs.
[1] Gardens and Menageries of the Zoological Society Delineated
Quadrupeds--vol. i.
The object of the Zoological Society in their collection of Zebus is the
introduction of an improved breed of oxen. The larger specimens are kept
at the farm at Kingston Hill, and only a pair of small ones are reserved
for the Gardens, in addition to the Brahmin Bull, who occupies the
central division of the Cattle Shed.
[Illustration: Brahmin Bull in Cattle Shed.]
The specimen before us has been received by the Society from India, and
is one of the largest that has ever been seen in Europe. It is equal in
size to the larger breeds of our native oxen, and is of a slaty grey on
the body and head; with cream-coloured legs and dewlap, the latter
exceedingly long and pendulous; very short horns directed upwards and
outwards; and ears of great proportional magnitude, and so flexible and
obedient to the animal's will as to be moved in all directions with the
greatest facility. Although a full-grown male, he is perfectly quiet,
good-tempered, and submissive, and receives the caresses of strangers
with apparent satisfaction.
The whole of the breeds of Zebus are treated with great veneration by
the Hindoos, who hold it sinful to deprive them of life under any
pretext whatever. They are in general used as beasts of draft,
principally for purposes of husbandry, but a select number (of which the
specimen before us is one,) are exempted from all services, and even
idolized.
Bishop Heber,[2] calls them _Brahminy_ Bulls, and tells us they are
turned out when calves, on different solemn occasions by wealthy
Hindoos, as an acceptable offering to Siva. It would be a mortal sin to
strike or injure them. They feed where they choose, and devout persons
take great delight in pampering them. They are exceeding pests in the
villages near Calcutta, breaking into gardens, thrusting their noses
into the stalls of fruiterers and pastry-cook's shops, and helping
themselves without ceremony. Like other petted animals, they are
sometimes mischievous, and are said to resent with a push of their horns
any delay in gratifying their wishes.
[2] Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India,
vol. i. 4to., 1828.
We may here in connexion with the Zoological Gardens, not
inappropriately introduce the following graphic passage from the
concluding Number of Mr. Landseer's "Characteristic Sketches of
Animals." It appears as a "Note by the Editor," Mr. John Barrow, and
represents the labours of the Zoological Society as very gratifying to
the subscribers and the public.[3]
[3] We are indebted to the _Literary Gazette_ of Saturday last
for early cognizance of this extract.
"By the spirit and perseverance with which they have succeeded in
_domiciling_ their magnificent collection of living animals in the
Regent's Park--by the knowledge and experience they have evinced in the
arrangements adopted in that establishment, and the good taste, skill,
and industry, they have employed in carrying into effect its multiplied
details--they have accomplished a task of far higher importance, and of
infinitely nobler character, than that of merely providing for all
classes of an enlightened metropolis an additional source of amusement
and recreation. Such a collection, so maintained and so displayed,
advances--slowly but certainly--the best interests of morals and
philosophy. The curiosity which it excites, the gratification it
affords, operate, though with differing degrees of intensity, on the
most uncultivated and the best informed of those who visit it, to beget
inquiry and awaken reflection; and in what can inquiry and reflection,
thus originated, determine, but in producing or extending the most
sublime impressions of the beneficence, the power, and the providence,
of the Great Author of Creation? The physical mechanism of birds, the
muscular energies of brutes, strike us at first with wonder, or move us
with mingled terror and delight; but the activity of the human mind will
not suffer us long to remain at this point of simple excitement. We
involuntarily begin to analyze the properties of animals, the relations
of their structure to those properties, the adaptation of the parts to
the whole of that structure, and the conformity of their physical
endowment and their instincts to the various _habitats_ or regions in
which they respectively exist. Whether we reason from causes to effects,
as from instinct to habit; or endeavour, upon an inverted process, to
arrive from the consideration of effects at causes, as from habit to
instinct; or attempt, upon the analysis and analogies of admitted facts
in the natural history of one animal, to deduce a theory of the history
of another,--we shall find this mysterious but beautiful chain of
relation and adaptation unbroken, impassable, perpetual.
* * * * *
"Observe how this infant colony, of which we are especially speaking,
has already been peopled! The majestic rusa, captured in the sultry
forests of Bengal, and the elegant gazelle, which has once bounded over
the parching deserts of Barbary, have become intimate and make their
couch with the white reindeer, brought from the icy wastes of Lapland.
The misshapen but harmless kangaroo of New Holland is a fellow-lodger
with the ferocious gnu of Southern Africa; and the patient llama, who
has left the snowy sides and precipitous defiles of the Andes,
contemplates without terror its formidable neighbours, the wolf of the
Pyrenees, and the bear of the stupendous mountains of Thibet. In the
immediate vicinity of the sacred bull, whose consecrated life has
heretofore been passed in luxurious freedom or insolent enjoyment on the
banks of the Ganges or the Jumna--feeds the gaunt and shaggy bison,
which crops with sullen tranquillity a herbage more nutritious but less
grateful to him than he loved to cull among the stony pastures of the
Alleghany range, or of the howling solitudes surrounding Hudson's Bay.
Though thousands of leagues have interposed between the arid sands from
which they have been imported into this peaceful and common home, the
camel of the Thebais, as he ruminates in his grassy _parterre_, surveys
with composed surprise the wild dog of the Tierra del Fuego and the
sharp-eyed dingo of Australia. Around the ghastly sloth-bear,
disentombed from his burrows in the gloomiest woods of Mysore or
Canara--and his more lively congener of Russia--the armadillo of Brazil
and the pine marten of Norway display a vivacity of action and a
cheerfulness of gesture which captivity seems powerless to repress. The
elephant of Ceylon, and the noble wapiti of the Canadas, repose beneath
the same roof; and from his bath, or his pavilion, the Arctic bear
contemplates--not his native rocks and solitudes, the crashing of
icebergs, and the Polar seas, alternately lashed into terrific fury or
hemmed in by accumulating precipices of ice; but--monkeys of almost
every size, form, and family, which gambol in the woods of Numidia or
Gundwana; in the loftiest trees of Sumatra; on the mountains of Java; by
the rivers of Paraguay and Hindustan; of South America and South Asia;
among the jungly banks of the Godavery and the woody shores of the
Pamoni, of the Oroonoko, and the Bramahputra--in short, in every sunny
clime and region where the rigours of his own winter are not only
unknown, but inconceivable. There is something sublime in the mere
consideration of the prodigious remoteness from one another of the
various points from which these animals have thus been collected;
something gratifying to human pride, in the thought that neither the
freezing atmosphere of the countries which surround the Pole, nor the
fierce heats of those which lie beneath the Line, or are enclosed
between the Tropics--neither destructive climates, nor trackless
deserts, nor stormy oceans, can interpose obstacles powerful enough to
quell the enterprise of man!--that the rocky caverns of the loneliest
sea-coasts, and the deepest recesses of inland forests, are insufficient
to protect from him the most terrible beasts of prey which inhabit
them;--and that, in short, all the kingdoms of nature pay tribute to his
sagacity or his power, his courage or his curiosity. This feeling is
heightened, amidst the scene we have attempted to describe, by still
more numerous representatives of the feathered race. Birds of the
boldest wing and brightest hues--the denizens of the woods and the
waters--of every variety of plumage, habit, song, and size--from the
splendid macaw and toucan to the uncouth pelican and the shapeless
puffin--from the gigantic ostrich to the beautiful but diminutive golden
wren; in short, all the birds which are congregated in this spot come,
literally, from every corner of our globe. The great alpine vulture may
have sailed above the heights of Hohenlinden; the Egyptian vulture have
roosted on the terraced roofs of Cairo, or among the sacred walls of
Phylæ; the condor, have built in the ruined palaces of the Incas of
Peru; the flamingo or the ibis have waded through the lakes and marshes
which surround the desolation of Babylon; the eagle of America have
ranged, perhaps daily, over those narrow straits which separate two
worlds and bid defiance to all navigation! The emu has long since
tracked the vast interior of that fifth continent whose inland rivers,
tribes of mankind, quadrupeds, and mineral and vegetable productions,
remain still, to us, sealed mysteries. The crowned crane has drawn its
food from the waters of that vast lake of Tschad, in the search for
which so many Europeans have perished; the little stormy petrel, borne
on the surge, or wafted by the gale, has travelled to every shore that
has been visited by the tempests in which it loves to rove; and the
wandering stork, like the restless swallow, has nestled, indifferently,
among the chimneys of Amsterdam, the campaniles of Rome or of Pisa, and
on the housetops of Timbuctoo. In looking round upon these various birds
and quadrupeds of all the regions of our globe--in considering the
distant countries of their birth--their strangeness to us in feature or
in form--the endless varieties of their instincts, their habits, their
affections, their antipathies, their appetites--the several important
offices they are destined to perform in what may be called the physical
economy of the world,--in observing the powers of offence in some, of
defence in others, and the astonishing means which have been supplied to
certain classes of them destitute both of one and the other, of
procuring their subsistence with equal facility,--it is surely
impossible not to ascend to the contemplation of that all-wise and
benevolent Power which has called all these creations into being, and
thus informed and thus endowed them!"
* * * * *