The farming stock of the cultivator is as limited as his wants are few and his cottage inartificial: it usually consists of a pair of buffaloes or oxen, and a few rude implements of husbandry. There is a small proportion of sheep and goats on the island; but, with the exception of poultry, no kind of live stock is reared exclusively either for the butcher or the dairy. By the returns made in 1813 of the stock and cattle of the provinces under the British government, containing a population of nearly two millions and a half, it was found that there were only about five thousand sheep and twenty-four thousand goats. The number of buffaloes, by the same return, and in the same space, was stated at 402,054, and of oxen at 122,691. Horses abound in the island, but are principally employed about the capitals, and not in husbandry, further than in the transport of produce from one district to another.
The buffalo and ox are used for ploughing. The former is of a smaller size than the buffalo of Sumatra and the Peninsula, though larger than that of Bengal and of the islands lying eastward of Java. It is a strong tractable animal, capable of long and continued exertion, but it cannot bear the heat of the mid-day sun. It is shy of Europeans, but submits to be managed by the smallest child of the family in which it is domesticated. The buffalo is either black or white: the former is larger and generally considered superior. In the _Súnda_, or western and mountainous districts, nine out of ten are white, which is not at all the case in the low countries; no essential difference in the breed has been discovered to be connected with this remarkable distinction of colour. The usual price of a buffalo in the western districts is about twenty-four rupees for the black, and twenty rupees for the white; in the eastern districts the price varies from twelve to sixteen rupees. The _Súnda_ term for a buffalo is _múnding_; the Javan, _máisa_ and _kébo_: and in compliment to _Laléan_, the prince who is supposed to have introduced cultivation into the _Súnda_ districts, that prince and his successors on the _Súnda_ throne are distinguished by the appellation _Múnding_ or _Máisa_. The name of the individual sovereigns enters into a compound with these general terms for the dynasty, and they are called _Máisa-laléan_, _Múnding-sári_, and so of others.