Lect. VI.] IMPROVEMENT OF BREEDS. 1G3 



very great. Some tliree-year-old Colts were turned 

 for the winter into an excellent pasture, with the kind 

 of grass they prefer, — close and velvety, — for they 

 have a most accurate bite, and are not like the Cow, 

 who will eat long, coarse stuff, its length helping her, 

 she having no upper incisors. In the quick hedges 

 bounding this pasture, the pollard ash-trees had recently 

 l^een beheaded for poles, and the "top and lop" had been 

 made into faggots. These trees are very bitter, and 

 full of potash salts, l)esides ; nevertheless, the Colts 

 preferred this woody diet to the grass, and made a clean 

 riddance of the firewood, only leaving the white centre 

 of the lare^est l^ouohs. The Rhinoceros is said to tear a 

 young tree into laths, and then to eat the laths as we 

 should eat celery. But the magnificent dentition of the 

 Cow, the Horse, and the Rhinoceros has been preparing ; 

 — this is no fable ; the palaeontologist knows if this be true 

 or not — ever since the time when the cattle were none 

 of them any better, and many not so good, as the 

 existing Tapir. It is not true that nature " does not 

 make her works for man to mend." I have Ijeen familiar, 

 from my childhood, with the method 1_)y which the breeds 

 of the existing cattle are mended 1)y us. During the long 

 Tertiary epoch, during which nature, herself, has been 

 developing the teeth and jaws of the improving Eutheria, 

 she has also, at the same time, wondrously perfected 

 their o\ait and carriac:e. No movement of a dancer is 

 more elegant than the ordinary walk of a high-bred 



