9 



heights, the botanist would as assuredly look for a 

 change in the outward configuration of certain species, 

 which colonize equally the rich meadows and teeming 

 ravines, as a geographical difference is a priori antici- 

 pated between the hard, sturdy mountaineer and the 

 more enervated denizen of the plain. A daisy, gathered 

 on the cultivated lawn, has usually attained a greater 

 degree of perfection and luxuriance than its companion 

 from the sterile heath; and the bramble which chokes 

 up the ditches of the sheltered hedgerow, wears a very 

 different aspect from its stunted brother of the hills. 



Nor is this dependency on external circumstances less 

 apparent in the animal kingdom also, the domesticated 

 races of which every agriculturist is aware are capable 

 of modification, artificially, to an almost unlimited ex- 

 tent ; and which exhibit, when even in a state of nature, 

 nearly as great a variety, from purely natural causes, as 

 they have been proved to do when subjected to the laws 

 and routine of agrarian science. Take the sheep, for 

 example, of Dartmoor or Wales, and compare them with 

 those from the wolds of Lincolnshire and the downs of 

 Kent ; or contrast the Hereford oxen with those of the 

 midland counties, or of the Caledonian breed, still extant 

 in Cadzow Forest, and it will require but little argument 

 to convince us how important is the operation of local 

 circumstances in regulating the outward contour of these 

 higher creatures. If therefore this general obedience to 

 influences from without be self-evident in the vegetable 

 world, and equally traceable amongst the Mammalia, 



B 5 



