CHAPTER XXX

THE WORLD'S HERDS AND FLOCKS

The great tribe of animals called Ungulata ("hoofed") or Herbivora (eaters of herbage--herbivores), combines two types of structure into which they have diverged since their origin at the dawn of the Tertiary era, namely:

I. Odd-toed, or solid-hoofed, ungulates (Perissodactyla), typified by horses; and

II. Even-toed, or split-hoofed, ungulates (Artiodactyla), typified by the cattle.

They exist in every part of the habitable globe except Australasia, have furnished sustenance to the larger Carnivora, and have supplied the need of man for assistance in his labor, and with materials for food, shelter, and clothing. Without them modern civilization would have been impossible.

Both divisions have lost the plantigrade (flat-soled) walk of their early ancestors, and now step on the tips of their toes. This has been gradually gained as an adaptation to the increase of dry land and the formation of grassy plains, which we know went on steadily, especially through the last third of the Tertiary era. The short, massive legs and spreading, five-toed feet, useful in sustaining an animal's weight in marshes, were slowly changed to longer, more slender limbs and a digitigrade walk as greater speed and nimbleness were required in making their way over wide pastures to and from watering places or in escaping the beasts of prey, which were themselves becoming swifter and more active in jumping by a coordinate evolution of abilities. But before proceeding to the typical hoofed tribes, mention must be made of the elephants, which belong in this order. Elephants appear to stand apart from all other mammals, and from the earliest times have attracted attention by their huge bulk and strength, and by traditions of their intelligent performances. They seem a necessary part of our ideas of Oriental life and grandeur, and a circus without trick elephants would be a poor show in the eyes of the American youngster.

The naturalist classifies them (order Proboscidea) in this place because they are plainly, although remotely, related in structure to the solid-hoofed browsers; but only recently has he been able to trace their ancestry back to a small, tapirlike forefather of Miocene days, with no trunk and no tusks. The trunk, of course, is the animal's lengthened nose, become an organ useful for many purposes other than breathing; and the tusks are overgrown upper incisor teeth. The elephants of the present time are few compared with those of warmer past ages, when many species, as well as various cousins, such as long-haired mammoths and towering mastodons, wandered over Europe, Asia, and our own country. Now only two kinds remain: one in Africa, the other Asiatic. They differ in many ways, most noticeably in the size of the ears, which in the African elephant are very much larger than those of the Asiatic species. Both are forest animals, feeding on leaves and twigs. African elephants were formerly to be found all over the wooded parts of that continent, traveling about in herds that sometimes numbered a hundred or more individuals; and were varied in appearance, some being taller than any Oriental one, while others (in the Congo region) are so small as to be called dwarfs. The natives have never captured and made use of them, and few have been tamed by anyone within recent years, but in the time of the Carthaginians and Romans they were held captive, ridden, and employed in war, and in sports of the arena. They have been greatly reduced in numbers by ivory hunters, and would be nearly or quite extinct now had they not been protected in recent years by wise laws.

The Asiatic, or "Indian" elephant, which is confined to India, Ceylon, Burma, and the Malay countries, still roams the jungles as a wild animal, but every herd is known to and protected by the local governments, and from time to time these are rounded up, and young ones are captured and trained to man's service. Only in this way can the domestic supply be maintained, since these elephants rarely produce young when in captivity. They are utilized as riding and burden-bearing beasts, for hauling heavy loads, especially in the army service, and in handling large timber and other industrial operations. Some ivory is obtained from this species, but the tusks are far smaller than those of the African elephants, and the females bear none at all, while both sexes are armed in Africa, where an old "bull's" tusks have been known to exceed a weight of 300 pounds each.

Although there is no reason to suppose the African elephant is less intelligent by nature than the Oriental one, nearly all the evidence of thoughtfulness in these animals comes from Indian examples--a species that has been studied and educated for hundreds of years. That they may be taught to do almost anything of which their bodies are capable is plain; but undoubtedly they comprehend very largely the purposes of the man directing them, and use "brains" in assisting him to carry them out. They have retentive memories, appreciate kindness, and constantly show skill and discretion in accomplishing what they are asked to do. In regard to no other sort of animal has so much been written as of elephants; and the sum of the testimony is that they are not only very teachable and faithful in performing their tasks, when not disabled by fear, but often use surprisingly good judgment in their work.

Distantly related to the elephants, yet so remote in relationship to anything else as to be set apart in an order (Hyracoidea) by themselves, and with no visible geological ancestry, are the queer little "conies" of the Scriptures, called rock rabbits, and dassies in South Africa. They have a singular resemblance to rabbits, apart from their little round ears, and are more like enlarged copies of our western pikas, but their anatomy and teeth show they are far from being rodents; and they are classified here mainly by reason of their rhinoceroslike teeth, and the hooflets on their toes, so that they form a quaint intermediary between the elephants and the solid-hoofed section of the ungulates; they are, indeed, relics of an exceedingly primitive and ancestral type of ungulates.

RHINOCEROSES, TAPIRS AND HORSES

Included by their general anatomy among the perissodactyls, although they have several toes on each foot, all reaching the ground, and, like those of elephants, connected by webs and clothed with thick, hooflike nails, are the rhinoceroses and tapirs. The rhinoceroses are relics of a long and interesting geological history. Two belong to Africa, one of which, the common "black," browsing rhinoceros, is still abundant south of the equator in all the more open and less occupied parts, of the continent; while the other, the larger, square-lipped, grass-eating, or "white" rhinoceros, has become very rare save in certain remote and upland plains. Both have thick, hairless skins of a pale lead-gray, which lie smoothly over the whole body, and both have, on the nose, two horns, composed of matted, whalebonelike hairs, not a part of the skeleton but springing from the skin. The front horn is always much the longer, in some cases reaching a length of more than fifty inches. Asia has three species of rhinoceros, all of which differ from the African in having functional incisor teeth, and in their hides. The best known is the "Indian" rhinoceros, now confined to the hot jungles of the extreme northeast of India. It has only one horn, and its dark hide is thrown into heavy folds looking like artificial armor. It became known to Europe early in the sixteenth century, and became the subject for some of the most curious speculations and superstitions of that credulous age. The "Sondaic" or hairy rhinoceros still is to be found in jungles from Bengal around to the end of the Malayan Peninsula. It is smaller than the Indian one, and its folded and tesselated hide supports a coat of short hair; its horns are only two little protuberances on its nose. Finally Sumatra and Borneo have a rhinoceros whose coat is still more hairy, and among whose peculiarities is the possession of two formidable horns. These creatures are perhaps the best examples remaining of what Merck's rhinoceros (fossil) and other big quadrupeds of the Pleistocene era looked like.

The tapirs are even more widely separated in habitat than the rhinoceroses, for four species dwell in the New World between Guatemala and southern Brazil and Guiana, while the fifth belongs to Malaysia. They are forest animals, and mainly browsers, the long, almost trunklike nose and lips enabling them to seize and tear off leaves and twigs easily. They choose low districts, as a rule, and rush into the safety of water when in danger from the jaguar or other beasts. They are shaped somewhat like a very fat pony, but with a big, pointed head, and are clothed with short hair of plain dark tints, but the young are spotted at first. They are timid, secretive and nocturnal in their habits. Their flesh is excellent meat.

This brings us to the horses, whose geological history is one of the romances of natural history, as it is traced from the little five-toed eohippus of the Eocene up to the herds that roamed our western prairies, and disappeared so completely, and so unaccountably, in the era just preceding the present. Our domestic horses, consequently, are all of Old World origin. As far back as man can be traced in his supposed birthplace in central Asia herds of small horses fed upon those high plains; and about fifty years ago bands of ponies were discovered ranging the dreary deserts of Dzungaria, or northwestern Chinese Turkestan, and specimens are now living and breeding in the Zoölogical Park in New York and in European collections. This truly wild horse stands about ten hands high, and is covered with thick hair of a dull brown color, unstriped.

Such horses were undoubtedly hunted and killed as food by Paleolithic men; and when, many, many thousands of years ago, they had in some degree domesticated them, and began to migrate southward and westward, they took these horses with them. Those people that gradually occupied Persia, Mesopotamia, and the plains of Arabia and North Africa, developed them into riding animals that became perfected in what we know as the Arabian horse. Those tribes that migrated across Russia and along to the northern shore of the Mediterranean, found in Europe a similar, but more robust horse, now designated the "forest" horse, which the savages regarded as game. The two interbred in the course of time; but the southern breeds have remained smaller, lighter, and more agile, while the northern or forest stock has been the foundation of the heavy draft horses of northern Europe. After the Crusades Arab blood was introduced to effect a still further refinement of the horses of southern Europe, and it was from this Arab-improved stock, prevalent in Spain, that the horses sent to the Spanish colonies in the Americas were derived. Our plains, and the pampas of South America, soon became populated with these horses run wild--"mustangs," showing even yet traces of their aristocratic lineage.

So near to the horses that they belong to the same genus (Equus) are the zebras, which differ mainly in their brighter coloring, less bushy tail, "roached" manes, and lack of those callosities called "chestnuts" on the hind legs. The zebras are exclusively African, and include two types, a southern and a northern. The true zebra, now extinct, except where kept and bred in captivity, belonged to the mountains near the Cape of Good Hope, was only about twelve hands high, and had black stripes on a white ground.

In the more open parts of Africa, north to Lake Rudolph, roamed Burchell's variety of this zebra, the one now commonly seen in menageries, in which the coat is creamy or golden yellow, and the black stripes are far broader. Its northern variety, Grevy's zebra, has the black stripes narrower, but so much more numerous that the white shows as mere lines between them. To these must be added an extinct species, killed off many years ago by Boer farmers and other sportsmen, which was known as the "quaha" (quagga) from its barking neigh; it was a dark brown, with stripings only on the head and neck.

The zebras seem incapable of becoming useful in harness or under the saddle, but their very near relatives, the asses--in spite of the sober gray of their dress, and their ungainly ears--have given us the patient and enduring donkey, which has been a servant of mankind, at least in Egypt, ever since the date of the earliest monuments; and wild asses still flourish on the deserts of Africa from Algiers to Somaliland. Another somewhat larger and more variable species roams the upland plains of Persia and northern India, while a variety, the "kiang," lives on the arctic tableland of Tibet, and is as untamable a creature as can be imagined.

HIPPOS, PIGS AND CAMELS

With the hippopotamus we begin the long list of artiodactyls, or cloven-footed animals, in which the weight of the body rests equally on the two central digits (third and fourth) which are alike in development, while the second and fifth digits, when present, do little or no work, except in the hippopotamus, whose outside toes are as long as the central ones, because needed by an animal treading on muddy soil, and accustomed to swimming. Although this huge marsh denizen is now confined to Africa, it ranged into southern Europe and eastward to India within quite recent times, but was destroyed by the human settlement of these countries; and civilization will in due time exterminate it from the Congo and Nile basins where it now is so numerous, and so incompatible with commerce and industry.

The swine are the first artiodactyls to show the typical cloven feet, and in them the two hind toes reach almost to the ground, so as to help the footing in the soft ground that they frequent. The foremost member of the family (Suidæ) is the wild boar of the Old World, known from the North Sea to the Bay of Bengal; and it is hard to realize that the fat hogs of our stockyards are modifications of this bristling forest boar with his muscular form, swift gait, and terrible tusks. Far more ugly in appearance, however, is the wart hog of Africa and the hairless "babiroussa" of Celebes, whose upcurved tusks far outmeasure those of the Indian boar. America has a family of native swine named peccaries--small, thin-legged, grizzled-black pigs, with very thick, bristly necks and large, angular heads. They have wicked little eyes, razor-sharp tusks in both jaws, and no visible tails, and the young are not striped as in the typical Suidæ. These pigs go in companies, wandering mainly at night in search of food, and taking almost anything edible. They are irascible, attack with fierce energy in concert, and are formidable foes to anything afoot, driving even the jaguar up a tree when the band turns on him. One kind of peccary is common in southwestern Texas, and its roving bands do much damage by night to crops and gardens; it is called a "javelin."

The swine occupy a somewhat intermediate place between the solid-hoofed and the split-hoofed sections of the Herbivora; and the stomach is simple except in the peccaries, where it takes a complicated form that approaches that of the ruminants. This simplicity, with the correlated fact that swine do not chew the cud, enabled the leaders of the ancient Hebrews to set pigs apart, as unclean, by a more general definition than a mere name could give, thus leaving no way of escape for those who might be inclined to dodge the prohibition by quibbling. All other Herbivora are ruminants, that is, chewers of the "cud"--those that gather and swallow their food in haste, and then at leisure recover it and thoroughly rechew it in small quantities (cuds).

This strange operation, like the carrying away of food by pocket mice, monkeys, etc., enabled these comparatively defenseless animals to gather nutriment in a short time and then retreat to a safe place to prepare it for digestion. Associated with this practice is a large, complicated stomach, normally consisting of four chambers, into the first and largest of which the hastily swallowed forage is first received. Then, when swallowed a second time, it passes on into the second or true stomach, where real digestion begins.