206 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



pursues as a favourite study. After all, the nature 

 that makes the moth grow grey upon a grey tree, or 

 brown upon a kindred tint, may have established 

 some sort of a law upon the subject, of which, how- 

 ever, we have yet no clear comprehension. 



This is no new theory after all. It has happened 

 casually that, even while I write, I. find it suggested 

 long since in the pages of the Spectator. 



To return, then, to breeding; since the effect of 

 continual association admits of not unwarrantable sus- 

 picion, avoid giving it a chance to your detriment as 

 far at least as you can judge and decide. 



Strangely altered, and in some sense probably 

 amended, by dint of high art, have been the shape 

 and size of the horns of both sheep and cow. At the 

 root of the change doubtless lies the grand principle 

 of selection. Amidst cattle the long horn was once 

 in fashion ; the short horn is now. The middle horn 

 Youatt considers to have been the original which the 

 native oxen wore in early British days. With the 

 huge branching weapons of the buffalo, thirteen feet 

 long, and nearly nine from tip to tip {Rev. G. Wood), 

 to escape which barriers are erected for the wayfarer 

 in the neighbourhood of Rome (Whiteside), in this 

 treatise we have nothing to do, any more than we 

 have with that natural curiosity, the stupendous 

 " armature " upon the head of the African saddle-ox, 

 which the native is obliged to split up into numerous 

 ribbons, or to dissever so far as to have them swing 

 loosely on each side the head, lest they transfix him, 

 should the animal stumble, or rudely throw his head 

 up. With just the mention of them we pass by. 



