CATTLE AND SHEEP. 35 



of their other characteristics. The voice of antiquity in- 

 dicates self-coloured cattle. The bulls which Nestor sacri- 

 ficed on the strand at Pylos were Tra^/x.&avs?. The bull 

 which escaped Mercury, when at three days old he started 

 on a foray to drive Apollo's cows, was xyaveo?, probably 

 black ; but, whatever were the exact shades, certainly self- 

 coloured. The bull, over whose sacrificed carcass the oath 

 of the 'ETn-a ETrt ri/3at was sworn, was black. Indeed 

 the only instance which occurs to us, in which party- 

 coloured cattle are alluded to by any classical author, is 

 the line in which Virgil declares his own toleration of 

 motley : 



" Nee mihi displiceat rnaculis insignis et albo ; " 



and this very expression seems to indicate the prevalence 

 of self-colours, and that the variety which he mentions 

 was not in very general favour. Then comes the vexata 

 quastio of horns. Wide-horned and lofty-horned are con- 

 stant epithets applied to cattle in the Greek authors* It 

 always appeared to us that, in a claim for antiquity of race, 

 any animal who came into court without horns exhibited 

 a primd facie case against himself. On the other hand, 

 a gentleman, who is as enthusiastic as ourselves about 

 Scotch cattle, but who, while we prefer the Highlander, 

 fixes his affections on the graceful Galloway, always main- 

 tains that horns raise a presumption of a bar sinister 

 in the escutcheon, and considers our horned cattle as the 

 offspring of what Mr. Thomas Moore calls " a museum of 

 wittols." The Hereford brings good evidence that he is 

 the British representative of a widely-diffused and ancient 

 race. The most uniform drove of oxen which we ever 

 saw consisted of 500 from the Ukraine. They had white 

 faces, upward horns, and tawny bodies. Placed in Hereford, 

 Leicester, or Northampton market, they would have puzzled 

 the graziers as to the land of their nativity ; but no one 

 would have hesitated to pronounce that they were rough 

 Herefords. The splendid cream-coloured ox of Lombardy 



