212 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



small handsome aged parents late in the year (a late 

 calf proverbially seldom comes to any size, unless 

 superlatively nursed), on poor bleak high mountain 

 land, or on a cold pasture thickly stocked. 



A cold temperature has probably much to do with 

 it, when you recall the fact that the region of very 

 small horses is above the line of wheat, and almost 

 beyond the potato. How then are large animals, as 

 the urus and the white bear, grown there ? Why, 

 simply because it is their climate naturally, whereas 

 the horse, as Buffon shows, is intended for a warm, 

 though not too hot a latitude ; being yet capable of 

 adapting itself to a greater diversity of climate, so far 

 as we know now, than any other species except the 

 human. For its most magnificent development it 

 requires, undoubtedly, a certain degree of moisture. 

 For instance, the spare Arabian stock sold to the 

 Persians, and fed on the rich pastures along their 

 river banks, loses somewhat of the tenseness of its 

 nervous power, but gains in size, preserving mean- 

 while its beauty ; the texture of the bone, however, 

 sawn through, is coarser. By the same rule, in 

 England, suckers bought at the Welsh autumnal 

 fairs, swell upon the Lincoln and other fens to a 

 grander stature than they would have attained at 

 home ; while in a Yorkshire stud too great a dryness 

 of soil and climate is considered almost as prejudicial 

 to the young stock as a northern aspect for the 

 sheds. 



Thus the horses of Egypt especially, Italy, Den- 

 mark, Holland, and Flanders, are large ; those of 

 India, South America, the Gold Coast, Senegal, 



