is _tail_! Yes, that
tail was not to be mistaken. Many such had Ossaroo seen and handled in
his young days. Many a fly had he brushed away with just such a one,
and he could have recognised it had he found it growing upon a fish.

When they returned to the quarry, Ossaroo pointed to the tail of the
dead cow--not half so full and large as that of the bull, but still of
similar character--and with a significant glance to the others, said--

"Know 'im now, Sahibs--_Ghowry_."

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

THE YAKS.

What Ossaroo meant was that he knew the tail; but he was as ignorant of
the animal to which it was attached, as if the latter had been a dragon
or a comet. Ossaroo saw that the tail was a "chowry," in other words, a
fly-flapper, such as is used in the hot countries of India for brushing
away flies, mosquitos, and other winged insects. Ossaroo knew it, for
he had often handled one to fan the old sahib, who had been his master
in the days of his boyhood.

The word chowry, however, at once suggested to the plant-hunter a train
of ideas. He knew that the chowries of India were imported across the
Himalayas from Chinese Tartary and Thibet; that they were the tails of a
species of oxen peculiar to these countries, known as the yak, or
grunting ox. Beyond a doubt then the animals they had slain were
"yaks."

Karl's conjecture was the true one. It was a herd of wild yaks they had
fallen in with, for they were just in the very country where these
animals exist in their wild state.

Linnaeus gave to these animals the name of _Bos grunniens_, or grunting
ox--seeing that they were clearly a species of the ox. It would be
difficult to conceive a more appropriate name for them; but this did not
satisfy the modern closet-naturalists--who, finding certain differences
between them and other _bovidae_, must needs form a new genus, to
accommodate this one species, and by such means render the study of
zoology more difficult. Indeed, some of these gentlemen would have a
genus for _every_ species, or even variety--all of which absurd
classification leads only to the multiplication of hard names and the
confusion of ideas.

It is a great advantage to the student, as well as to the simple reader,
when the scientific title of an animal is a word which conveys some idea
of its character, and not the latinised name of Smith or Brown,
Hofenshaufer or Wislizenus; but this title should usually be the
specific one given to