202 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



one is of necessity to supply the defect of the other 

 is a doctrine I cannot subscribe. Put good to good 

 and you endorse an excellence, but I am too dull to 

 comprehend the theory upon which an animal is 

 picked with one [peculiar shape to counteract and 

 correct the malformation of another. Let the mal- 

 formed alone I should rather conclude. 



This is the universal rule in Arabia, the inferior 

 horse colts they sell at once to the Turks. 



If you have the requisite judgment and chance 

 offers, a good cross is sure to tell, as the old farmer 

 remarked by way of consolation to his Janet, when 

 her brooding duck was found to have wandered into 

 the cider press. But it must not escape you that it 

 does take exceeding judgment, when a certain point 

 is reached in the improvement of a breed or family 

 type, to alter it with beneficial effect. When such 

 men as Jonas Webb go in for a pen of ewes at 

 another's sale, they are, you may rely upon it, some- 

 what similar to his own, only giving an infusion of 

 new blood, or they surpass in some subterranean 

 point of excellence which his want, and which he has 

 pitched upon with the unerring instinct of a truffle 

 hunter. Disraeli, in his eloquent biography of Lord 

 George Bentinck, remarks in his chapter on the Jews, 

 " that it is in vain for man to attempt to baffle the 

 inexorable law of nature, which has decreed that a 

 superior race shall never be destroyed nor absorbed 

 by an inferior." This, if I understand it, applies not 

 to man only, but to domesticated breeds of cattle 

 also. Certain it is that breeds, as the Dishley long- 

 horns, and the dun Suffolk Punch, have been raised 



