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Show A BOUT THE TEXAS FAUNA th: burro, the steer and the cowboy. j m Rot u'a Vim at Home of t!i Pcrallar Oral-seai Oral-seai af the Bane 1'eaolr 1 anbrr or Old John la a Bright r Storj. Tfller'i Dreta. The fauna of west Texus is charac- i terized by a universal evasiveness, and is as hard to catch onto ss the flora is easy, writes Alice McGowan, a breezy newspaper correspondent, on her first visit to the western part of the Lone Star commonwealth. j The burro is an animal that will re- j pay study. He is undoubtedly u phi- j losopher, and regards with passive, ' stoic contempt the master against whom he connot openly contend. Ho ! can be broken, subdued, made to drudge, but to go beyond his accus- tomed pace, to descend to undignified , haste for any man's pleasure, he will I not; and his revenge upon his taskmas- ter is to travel along in saturnine enjoyment, en-joyment, aud at a snail-like gait, while j the tyrant wastes his breath in execrations execra-tions that are as incense to the burro's nostrils, and blows that are a sweet tribute to his powers of aggravation. He is familiarly known as the mocking bird, and is famous, not for his beauty but for his voice. He might more properly be called a nightingale, for ho loves to sing in the sweet dusk of summer nights. When the heart is too full of the mournful music of his cadenzas to bear more, steal out nnd attach a stone to the warbler's tail, and he will warble no more till it is removed. re-moved. To him, as to more dulcet singers in more civilized climes, the attitude of the vocalist is more important impor-tant than the music; and his chosen posture, when he would pour forth his soul in song, is with head and tail elevated, ele-vated, one umbrageous ear drooping pensively forward on his thoughtful , visage, and one thrown back over his shoulder, in a degago nnd careless manner, as Frederick Paulding used to wear his cloak in the palmy days when ho played llarnlet The strictly accurate mind hesitates, in mentioning the largest aud most conspicuous thing about the burro, between be-tween his bray and his ears. Ttio latter lat-ter are shaped something like a snow-shoe snow-shoe and are about that size. They tell a tale out here but I do not believe be-lieve it and only introduce it here because be-cause it has been considered by good judges to be mildly amusing of a Hollander Hol-lander who enrne to West Texas nnd was conveyed out by his host to view tho landscape o er. Ihe house stood j on a rolling plain, and just over a j little rise were soveralburros, of whom, howover, nothing could be seen but their ears. "He's nize und fladt, undt," his dull eyo brightening as it lit on the burros' ears. "I see you got vind-mills vind-mills too." The Toxas steer, though irreclaima- I bly uncivilized himself, makes valua- j Die contributions to civilization, sup- : plying beef, leather and unlimitod I it-entry it-entry materi al. The ranchman, like misfortune, early mnrks him for his j own. Though sharp, he is often roped ! in. Still he is never subdued, and goes bellowing and protesting on his wild and devious way, till he reaches the destination of all Texas steers Chicago; where his lust act ns an individual, in-dividual, is often to furnish material for a stirring paragraph. ' Perhaps the most curious and inter- j esting animal of West Texas fauna is j the cowboy. Closely allied to man lie yet has traits that are peculiar to himself him-self alone. Ho is a pleasing and at-tracive at-tracive species, extremely gentle and tractable when properly approached. He is the only genus of the entire West Texas fauna that will stand long enough to bo properly studied and classified. He is mild and gregarious in disposition, easily tamed and domesticated. do-mesticated. Tho impression so long obtaining in the east that he is u dangerous dan-gerous nnirnal, subsisting chiefly on lire-water and exceedingly destructive to human life, is entirely erroneous. Closely associated with tho cowboy, and, indeed, a species o the samo family, is tho bronco-buster, with his attendant figurct, the brone.i. These turn t.hw fl iseri m i nn.Mn(T nut.iirnlisfc will bracket together, somewhat in the manner of the bufTalo and the buffalo bird. But at any moment tho bronco-buster bronco-buster Is liable to reverse his position and become the bronco-busted. The above are extracts from my forthcoming work, "Tho Flora and Fauna of West Texas," and wheti a respectable gentleman with a thin, pale face and fat, red book rings your door bell. and invites your attention to tha work, do not rail at him nor drive him away. It will be my book, and it will be a good book, as these few brief extracts have shown you. |