72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Animals in cold climates are provided with a thicker covering of 

 hair than in warmer ones. Indeed, it is said that in some of the 

 tropical provinces of South America, there are cattle which have 

 an extremely rare and fine fur in place of the ordinary pile of hair. 

 Various other instances could be cited, if necessary, going to show 

 that a beneficent Creator has implanted in many animals, to a cer- 

 tain extent, a power of accommodation to the circumstances and 

 conditions amid which they are reared. 



The supply of food, wliether abundant or scanty, is one of the 

 most active cases of variation known to be within the control of 

 man. For illustration of its effect, let us suppose two pairs of twin 

 calves, all as nearly alike as possible, and let a male and a female 

 from each pair be suckled by their mothers until they wean them- 

 selves, and be fed always after with plenty of the most nourishing 

 food ; and the others to be fed with skimmed milk, hay tea and 

 gruel at first, to be put to grass at two months old, and subse- 

 quently fed on coarse and innutritions fodder. Let these be bred 

 from separately, and the same style of treatment kept up, and not 

 many generations would elapse before we had distinct varieties, or 

 breeds, differing materially in size, temperament and time of coming 

 to maturity. 



Suppose other similar pairs, and one from each to be placed ia 

 the richest blue-grass pastures of Kentucky, or in the fertile valley 

 of the Tees ; always supplied with abundance of rich food, these 

 live luxuriously, grow rapidly, increase in hight, bulk, thickness, 

 every way, they early reach the full size which they are capable of 

 attaining ; having nothing to induce exertion, they become inac- 

 tive, lazy, lethargic and fat. Being bred from, the progeny resem- 

 ble the parents, " only more so." Each generation acquiring more 

 firmly and fixedly the characteristics induced by their situation, 

 these become hereditary, and we by and by have a breed exhibiting 

 somewhat of the traits of the Teeswater or Durhams from which 

 the improved Short-horns of the present day have been reared. 



The others we will suppose to have been placed on the hill-sides 

 of New England, or on the barren Isle of Jersey, or on the high- 

 lands of Scotland, or in tlie pastures of Devonshire. These being 

 obliged to roam longer for a scantier repast grow more slowly, de- 

 velop their capabilities in regard to size not only more slowly, but, 

 perhaps, not fully at all — they become more active in temperament 

 and habit, thinner and flatter in muscle. Their young cannot so 

 soon shift for themselves and require more milk, and the dams 



