Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

148 CATTLE.
ox's forehead requires much nervous influence, and a great supply
of blood ; and, therefore, there are two foramina, or holes one for the
escape of the nerve, and the other of the artery. Each of these,
however, must be of considerable bulk, and they have to run over
a surface, where they are exposed to much danger. There is provision
made for this—a curious groove in. which they run for some
distance above and below, securely defended by the ridge of bone on
either side, until they give off various branches, and are so diminished
in bulk, that they are comparatively out of the reach of injury. If
the nerve or the artery were injured, the nervous influence and the
blood 'would be supplied by other ramifications.
THE ARCH UNDER WHICH THE TEMPORAL MUSCLE PLATS.
A strong process of the frontal bone goes to contribute to the
formation of the zygomatic arch, under which the head of the lower
jaw moves and is defended ; and the act of mastication is thus
securely performed. In the ox the teeth are never weapons of
offence ; he may gore and trample upon his enemy, but he does not
bite him : and his food is leisurely gathered in the first imperfect mastication,
and still more lazily and sleepily ground down in rumination
this arch therefore need not be, and is not, capacious and strong. It is,
from situation and the general shape of the head, exempt from vio-
lence and injury; and therefore the arch not only does not project
for the purpose of strength, and to give room for a mass of muscle
that is not wanted, and the frontal bone does not enter into its com-
position at all. (See g and e, p. 143.)
THE HORNS.
The froncals in the ox in their prolongation make the horns. The
foetus of three months has no horn ; during the fourth month it may
be detected by a little irregularity of the frontal bone, and by the
seventh month is. evident to the eye elevating the skin. It now
gradually forces its way through the cutis or skin, which it has
accomplished at the time of birth ;
and, continuing to grow, detaches
the cuticle or scarf skin from the cutis, and carries it with it ; and
this gradually hardening over it, forms the rudiment of the future
covering of the bone of the horn. Beneath this cuticle the horn soon
begins to form ; but it continues covered until the animal is twelve
or fifteen months old, giving a skinny roughness, which then peals off,
showing the shining and perfect horn.. The horn then is composed
of an elongation of the frontal bone, covered by a hard coating, origi-
nally of a gelatinous nature. Its base is a continuation of the frontal
bone, and is hollow or divided into numerous cells, (a and c, p. 144,)
all communicating with each other, and lined by a continuation of the
membrane of the nose.
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