CATTLE-RAISING IN SOUTH AMERICA. 837 



hams) have been imported at great expense. An owner desiring to 

 improve the stock of an estancia containing twenty thousand head, will 

 procure three or four Durham bulls, and then w^ill be astonished that 

 the desired effect is not more rapidly produced. He ought not to for- 

 get that cross-breeding can not succeed between races so different ex- 

 cept upon the condition that the new blood is continually renewed. To 

 transplant the most artificial breed, and the one most difficult to main- 

 tain, into a dried-up southern campo, is one of the aberrations which a 

 complete ignorance of European breeding and the taste for imitation 

 alone can explain. It is also surprising that hardly anything has been 

 done, in a region where everything is so favorable, to improve from 

 themselves the races w^hich have already become adapted to the me- 

 dium and been molded by it. Cross-breeding, although it is highly 

 esteemed, has been tried only in a limited number of estancias, and the 

 selection of the best native stock has not been seriously attempted on 

 any of the estates that I have observed. Although backward in respect 

 to selection, the intervention of man has brought about an improve- 

 ment in a no less important point of view, in the shape of measures to 

 secure a more regular supply of food. In Parana the grass of the 

 campos is burned at the dry season, in September and October of each 

 year, certain parts, bounded by streams or ditches, being reserved to be 

 burned later, so as to secure a succession of pasturage. In this state, 

 as farther south, another equally simple means of preserving the nat- 

 ural food has been much employed. The most moist, least exposed, 

 or best parts of the campo are inclosed, forming hivernadas^ if the 

 tract is I^lt^q, jjotreiros, if it is small, for the cattle which are to be fat- 

 tened. No inclosures large enough for all the stock have been made 

 yet. These means, however, do not create new food, but only utilize 

 that which already exists, and are of no use when a reserve of food is 

 most necessary that is, after frosty weather, and at the end of long 

 droughts. 



Two other measures might be adopted to assure a regular supply 

 of pasturage, but they have hardly been tried. The easier course 

 would be to install regular irrigation. In Parana the country is hilly, 

 and the water-courses are everywhere maintained through the hot sea- 

 sons. Farther south, it might be possible to irrigate large tracts 

 through the w^hole year, Estanciers who, like M. Carlos Reyles at 

 Durasno, have instituted irrigation on a considerable scale, have real- 

 ized increased profits from it. Nevertheless, it is easy to count the 

 breeders who have tried irrigation. There is probably not one in Pa- 

 rana, where, if you suggest it, the breeder will answer that an ex- 

 cess of water will promote the growth of worthless plants. The con- 

 dition of the cattle might be improved, and the return from them 

 increased, by dividing the enormous droves, which may now count 

 from four to thirty thousand head, into herds of from five hundred 

 to a thousand head. Now^, all the half -wild cattle b?'avos, as they 



