32 AGKICULTCRE. 



offspring are sterile. On the other hand, the buffalo breeds 

 with the short-horn, the dray-horse with the Shetland pony, 

 the deer-hound with the poodle, the Dartford fowl with the 

 bantam, the Caucasian with the Bushman ; and all the off- 

 spring are fruitful. And yet the outward dissimilarity is 

 greater in the individuals forming the respective pairs in 

 the latter series than in the former. Is it an unnatural 

 hypothesis, then, that, in all cases in which the offspring 

 of a connexion is fruitful, the father and mother are both 

 descended from one original pair ? We think not ; but 

 for our immediate purpose and it is a practical one it is 

 sufficient that we should feel assured that the same in- 

 fluences of climate, soil, security, ease, or hardship, which 

 have exercised so permanent an effect on man, have also 

 formed different races from animals originally of the same 

 type. 



To come to our own case of cattle where we find much 

 uniformity of size and shape, a self-colour, and a similarity 

 of disposition and aspect, recurring generation after gene- 

 ration, and even remaining after the external circumstances 

 of the animal have been materially changed, we have rea- 

 son to conclude that these distinctive marks have been 

 produced by natural causes ; in short, that Nature without 

 the interference of man has produced a race of cattle : and 

 further, we shall be confirmed if we find that this race 

 does not require the assistance of man to preserve it from 

 deterioration. Should history, ancient painting or sculp- 

 ture, or even reasonable tradition, give evidence that ani- 

 mals, having the same distinctive marks, existed at a re- 

 mote period, our conclusions will have received still further 

 confirmation. On the other hand, we witness daily the 

 immense power which man possesses of modifying the va- 

 rious animals which he has reduced to domesticity. Sir 

 John Sebright bred pigeons to a feather ; and thirty years 

 ago we were used to see here and there dairies of sheet 

 cows, which some very fanciful gentleman had called into 

 existence. But these artificial animals had a constant ten- 



