REARING AND FEEDING OF ANIMALS. 349 



ductiveness of the farm will allow it. But although size be an important ele- 

 ment in the character of a breed, there is another property to which that of size 

 is subordinate, namely, that of a disposition to quick fattening and early matu- 

 rity. This property depends not on size, but on a different class of characters. 



Form. The principal purpose in rearing oxen, is to produce flesh. The 

 rearing of females for milk is, doubtless, also important; but, in the great ma- 

 jority of cases, this purpose is regarded as subsidiary and subordinate to that of 

 feeding. 



There are certain external characters which indicate a disposition in the 

 animal to feed, and certain characters that show that the animal has less of 

 this property, and does not quickly arrive at maturity. These characters are 

 familiar to breeders, and a knowledge of them is readily acquired by practice 

 and observation. But before attending to these characters, it will be well to 

 consider in what really consists the property of quick and easy feeding. 



The flesh of an animal, it has been said, consists of muscles. A muscle is a 

 combination of threads or fibres, bound together by a sort of minute mesh-work, 

 to which the term cellular tissue has been applied. Each thread or fibre is 

 divided, so far as the eye assisted by powerful glasses can discover, into smaller 

 fibres still. A number of these smaller fibres or filaments form a fibre; a num- 

 ber of these fibres forms a fasciculus, or bundle of fibres; and a number of these 

 fasciculi forms a muscle. Now, surrounding the fibres, the fasciculi, and the 

 muscles, is the unctuous substance, fat. The same matter is formed between 

 the muscular substance and the skin, and surrounds, or is intermingled with, 

 the various viscera within the body. It surrounds, in large quantity, the heart, 

 the kidneys, and other organs. 



The muscular fibre grows with the animal, and is essential to its existence 

 and power of motion. When the animal arrives at its full growth, little further 

 addition can be made to the muscle; but it is otherwise with the growth of 

 fatty matter. When the food which the animal assimilates by the action 

 of its organs, is no longer needed to be converted into muscle, it is converted 

 into fat, and this being intermingled with and surrounding the fibres, the fas- 

 ciculi, and the muscles, the muscles become enlarged. By feeding an animal, 

 then, we have little power over any increase of the muscular substance, but we 

 have a great one over the fatty substance, which, along with the muscle, forms 

 food. 



Now, an animal that arrives soon at maturity with regard to the growth of 

 his fleshy fibre, and tends readily to secrete fat, is the kind of animal best suited 

 to the purposes of the breeder and feeder. Such an animal is said to be a quick 

 grower, and kindly feeder. 



These properties seem mainly to depend on the power of digestion possessed 

 by the animal. And the external characters which indicate this are a capacity 

 of chest for containing the respiratory organs, and of trunk for containing the 

 stomach and other viscera employed in the process of digestion. This we may 

 infer from the effect; for, in all cases, it is found that the property of quick 

 feeding is combined with a capacious chest and a round body. An animal of 

 this form requires a less quantity of food to produce a given increase of weight, 

 than one whose chest is narrow and whose sides are flat. When we look for 

 a feeding animal, therefore, we require that his chest shall be broad, and his 

 ribs well arched; and where this form exists, the back will likewise be wide 

 and flat. We require, too, that the body shall be large in proportion to the 

 limbs, or, in other words, that the limbs shall be short in proportion to the 

 body. 



Further, it is seen, that, in animals indicating a disposition to fatten, there is 

 a general rotundity of form, as where the neck joins the head, the shoulders 

 the neck, and so on, and that there is a general fineness or smallness of the 

 bones, as of the limbs and head. Thelimbs being short, the neck is not required 

 to be long, and shortness of the neck, therefore, is a character connected with 

 a disposition to fatten. 



In the case of the horse, it was seen that the body abstracted from the neck 

 and head is comprehended within a square, the body occupying about the half 

 of the square. But, in the case of the ox, the body "is comprehended within a 

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