GENERAL. 35 



aud, secondly, in the tallow and grease. The cross of the 

 shorthorn does not, to any very great extent, raise the 

 weight of the hide, and in this particular, apparently, does 

 not augment the value of the cattle in a degree com- 

 mensurate with the cost of introducing high blood into 

 the herds. The introduction of these higher class animals, 

 whose good qualities have been perfected under domesti- 

 cation, high breeding, selection, and feeding, into the semi- 

 wild herds of the plain, subjecting them to similar treatment 

 and obliging them to seek their food as best they can, 

 and exposing them to all the vicissitudes which the 

 common herds are, as it were, born to, is not likely to 

 lead to immediate appreciable advantage in any other 

 particular. Subject to the same treatment, as I have said, 

 and acquiring the habits of the half-wild cattle of the 

 country, the cross-breeds after a few generations, where 

 cross-bred bulls only are used, make little more fat and 

 not much more beef than the common stock. The often 

 precarious and unequal feeding or pasture, the long driving 

 of the animals to the slaughter, unfit the cattle for any 

 purpose other than the common one of hide-salting and 

 steaming for grease. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of 

 the estancieros know no other use for their cattle, and 

 have no conception of any other principle of breeding 

 than that oi a state of nature ; and immediate and 

 palpable benefit alone would induce them to step out of 

 the accustomed course, and in many cases not even this 

 would induce them to take the trouble. It is not likely, 

 therefore, that cattle-refining will, for some time to come, 

 attain any wide-spread development. The spirited 

 pioneers of the attempt find themselves without the 

 support which they anticipated ; they find no sufficient 

 sale for the bulls which they breed, so that the improve- 

 ment is limited to their own herds. On these establish- 



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