BREEDING. 207 



The long horn that has grown in our islands was 

 objected to originally in that it absorbed an undue 

 share of the juices that contribute to the animal's 

 growth. Buffon remarks of the breed of Ireland in 

 his day, "that both oxen and cows were without 

 horns," but this he explains applied only "to the 

 southern part, where there is scarcely any grass, or 

 very bad, which gives strength to my position that 

 horns arise from a superabundance of nourishment." 



Curious, however, was this remark of his in regard 

 to Ireland. Where was the Gulf Stream then with 

 the green-house climate it gives now-a-days \ This 

 century I do not think shall pass before those rare 

 pastures become the very reservoir of the best bred 

 cattle in our United Kingdom. Already their store 

 is high. Ultimately the question of horns has come 

 to be an important consideration in the animal's 

 beauty and value, a flat waxy even horn, rather light 

 at root, being an unmistakeable mark of high con- 

 nexion among short horns ; to obtain which unfairly 

 too often the file is brought into requisition. A bend 

 sinister, rumour has it, they correct by sticking a hot 

 loaf down upon the horn, until its substance becomes 

 sufficiently pliable to follow rule into the shape de- 

 sired, and which, when cool, it retains. 



In the Journal of a Naturalist it is mentioned 

 that in 1825, in the district where he resided, there 

 was a great scarcity of heifer calves. " How far it 

 extended I do not know, but for many miles round, 

 as we had in that year scarcely any female calves 

 born. Dairies of forty or fifty cows produced not 

 more than five or six, those of inferior numbers in 



