6 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



sive-looking harmless poll at the Paris Exhibition so 

 pleasantly imposed upon the credulity of the French- 

 man ; the round-quartered Ayrshire ; the dun, snake- 

 headed Suffolk (lacteal par excellence, a very patent 

 manufactory of milk) ; the chesnut cow of Barbary 

 (Siculce greges probably) ; the Nagore bull, spoilt 

 child of India, who will drop himself sans ceremonie 

 so handily, with a " hope I don't intrude " air, over a 

 six-foot paling just for a drink at a particular 

 fountain, and, having drank, take it back again as 

 quietly : — that one line of ultimate lineage connects 

 all these, almost surpasses one's belief. Yet so the 

 authorities recount, and between them it is not for a 

 poor countryman to decide. To come, however, 

 nearer home, what the breed exactly was in these 

 islands when the proud Britisher lived in the straw, 

 and painted his skin every colour without reference 

 to harmonic combination, we do not quite know ; 

 nor would we venture to predict what it shall be 

 when the New Zealander shall take his hypothetical 

 seat on the ruins of London-bridge. 



The best accredited history of the British cow, 

 commencing centuries ago, is, perhaps, that the 

 original breed in this island was the " middlehorn," 

 represented now by the Devon, Sussex, Hereford- 

 shire, Welsh — the "shorthorn" being clearly of 

 foreign extraction ; the * polls " an accidental variety 

 in the first instance, perpetuated by man's skill, as 

 was the white moss-rose, which we are given to 

 understand first came of a diseased branch acci- 

 dentally developed by an ordinarily tinted tree in the 

 garden of a gentleman at Clifton. 



