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where felt — that mutual dependence, each upon the other, 

 that intelligent appropriation and cultivation, on the one 

 hand, that unconscious and entire obedience and submis- 

 sion of all the great vital forces, on the other — who can 

 tell it at all? And superior as we may be, powerful, con- 

 trolling, and independent, can any man contemplate the 

 magnitude of the change, were the " popular sovereign- 

 ty" of this great community of cattle to be asserted, and 

 man's dominion suddenly broken ? From the feeding of 

 armies, and the sustaining of the busy throng who fill 

 places of power and trust, down to the nourishing drop 

 which supports the feeble child in its first grasp upon life, 

 it is the domestic animal which hears our long and con- 

 stant human appeal, and never hesitates in its devoted and 

 self-sacrificing reply. In parks, in meadows, before the 

 cottage door, with an entire and unresisting submission 

 to circumstances, there comes to man, from his dumb ally, 

 food and raiment, and an unceasing claim upon his skill 

 and his humanity. It is the animal kingdom which forms 

 one of the liveliest charms of a cultivated landscape, in 

 motion and repose. And man never succeeds in subduing 

 the earth, and revealing its quiet domestic beauty, until 

 he has enlisted those servants, without whose aid agricul- 

 ture must fail, and whose value is commensurate with the 

 progress made in the great business of applying all ani- 

 mate and inanimate nature to the necessities and adorn- 

 ments of civilized life. 



Is it surprising, then, that so much science, and skill, 

 and taste, should have been devoted to the development of 

 this great community of cattle ? It is a work which has 

 roused the deep agricultural instinct of Great Britain, and 

 has received the patient investigation of some of its pro- 



