LAW OF VARIATION. 37 



skimmed milk, hay tea and gruel at first, to be put to 

 grass at two months old, and subsequently fed on 

 coarse and innutritious fodder. Let these be bred from 

 separatel^^, and the same style of treatment kept up, 

 and not many generations would elapse before we had 

 distinct varieties, or breeds, differing materially in size, 

 temperament and time of coming to maturity. 



Suppose other similar pairs, and one from each to be 

 placed in the richest blue-grass pastures of Kentucky, 

 or in the fertile valley of the Tees ; always supplied 

 with abundance of rich food, these live luxuriously, 

 grow rapidly, increase in hight, bulk, thickness, every 

 way, they early reach the full size which they are capa- 

 ble of attaining ; having nothing to induce exertion, 

 they become inactive, lazy, lethargic and fat. Being 

 bred from, the progeny resemble the parents, ''only 

 more so.'^ Each generation acquiring more firmly and 

 fixedly the characteristics induced by their situation, 

 these become hereditary, and we by and by have a breed 

 exhibiting somewhat of the traits of the Teeswater or 

 Durhams from which the improved Short-horns of the 

 present day have been reared. 



The others we will suppose to have been placed on 

 the hill-sides of New England, or on the barren Isle of 

 Jersey, or on the highlands of Scotland, or in the pas- 

 tures of Devonshire. These being obliged to roam 



