4 AGRICULTURE. 



meration. In Ireland we trace no distinctive breed. The 

 distinction of the Irish ox and heifer was, that they were 

 the worst-shaped and worst-fleshed animals which ventured 

 to appear in an English market. " Good things scarce : 

 plenty of Irish," because an almost proverbial description 

 of a cattle fair. The same system of haphazard breeding, 

 which overran a large portion of England and Scotland, 

 prevailed universally in Ireland. As with, the human, so 

 with the bovine race. Each endowed with a marvellous 

 fecundity : maidens and heifers equally precocious. The 

 same circumstances of penury, hardship, and neglect which 

 made the Irish (not " the finest," but) the most degraded 

 peasantry who came into permanent contact with civiliza- 

 tion, made the Irish ox the most degraded of oxen. 



So stood the case a short century ago. But a great 

 change was at hand. The early systematic improvers of 

 our stock took the readiest, and perhaps, under the circum- 

 stances, the most scientific course. Having come to a 

 definite, and, in the main, an accurate, perception of the 

 objects which it was desirable to attain, they selected and com- 

 mingled, without any regard to affinity of race, the animals 

 which appeared likely to realize their vision. Immediate 

 success attended their efforts. The merits of the first cross 

 are proverbial, and even while we write, the newspapers offer 

 us a confirmation of the proverb in the statement, that the 

 prize ox, which this year (1849) furnished the baron of beef 

 for the Christmas festivities at Windsor Castle, was bred 

 by Prince Albert, was an animal of rare symmetry, quality, 

 and fatness, and was the produce of a buffalo cow by an 

 Ayrshire bull. In sheep, Bakewell put together white- 

 legged and black-legged, horned and polled, long-woolled 

 and short-woolled. Nor was the case much different in 

 cattle. The late Earl Spencer traced much of his standard 

 short-horned blood to a Galloway cow, which is still, we 

 believe, a luminary of the Herd-book, and which produced 

 one or more animals of agricultural celebrity. Still the 

 desire for something distinctive prevailed; and as every 



