CATTLE-RAISING IN SOUTH AMERICA, 835 



CATTLE-EAISIKG m SOUTH AMEEICA. 



By M. COUTY, 



professor hi the polytechnic school of rio ja>'eiro.* 



CATTLE-RAISING is far from having attained a sufficient im- 

 portance in Brazil. Immense provinces, like those of Goyaz 

 and Matto-Grosso, vast regions from the Amazon to the Parana, where 

 cattle could he raised easily and without care, remain unutilized for 

 want of a market and of convenient means of transport and conserva- 

 tion. There exist, however, some important stock-raising tracts and 

 cattle-exchanges. 



I have visited the provinces of Parana and Rio Grande and the 

 state of Montevideo, and what I have to say relates only to those 

 regions. Being neither an agriculturist nor a zootechnist, I have had 

 to limit myself to incomplete observations, and have endeavored to 

 see how those cattle which are described as half wild, and are without 

 any apparent direct relations mth man, have been able to adapt them- 

 selves in a definite manner to the different conditions of their life. 



Nothing can be more interesting than to study those conditions in 

 which cattle live and are propagated without stables and without an 

 assured supply of food ; nothing more instructive than to observe how 

 the time of heat, and consequently of births, the proportion of the 

 young, and even their survival, are differently regulated according to 

 the character of the country, in consequence of different physical con- 

 ditions. Nothing, moreover, can be more curious than to study the 

 habits of these supposed wild cattle, to see them living in isolated 

 societies, possessing real notions of what is belonging to them, and 

 each member of the community keeping his place. These facts are 

 of further importance, because they have served for the empirical 

 basis of the actual conditions, as they will have to serve as the basis 

 of an improved system of breeding. In all these countries the life of 

 the cattle is wholly free. The stock-raiser, or estancier, is the owner 

 of a very extensive tract of pasture-land, and he leaves the animals to 

 live upon it, feed themselves, and multiply at their will. The stock, 

 even in the wildest and least populous regions, form small herds of 

 from one hundred to one hundred and fifty head, which are made up 

 of steers, cows, calves, and bulls ; but are always composed of the 

 same individuals, and always inhabit the same very limited region of 

 the campo, and the animals pass their lives within this region Avithout 

 being confined by any inclosure. The distinctive character of the 



* M. Couty was recently charged by the Minister of Agriculture of Brazil to visit the 

 southern part of the empire and the neighboring states for the information of the depart- 

 ment. The paper of which the most essential parts are here given embodies the results 

 of his inquiries. 



