CHAP. I. ORIGIN OF THE BREEDS OF CATTLE. 5 



left us, therefore, is conjecture, and that of a vague and unsatisfactory 

 kind. There is, however, nothing to militate against the notion that 

 all the breeds, with their distinctive and sometimes apparently most 

 opposite characteristics of form and habits, which minister to the con- 

 venience of the population and add to the wealth of the country, have 

 descended from wild cattle such as those of Chillingham Park. Nor 

 is it difficult to believe this, when we consider that circumstances 

 of climate and locality which very much influence the peculiarities 

 and habits of plants may also, and in point of fact do, influence those 

 of animals. It has been well remarked by an able writer : 



" Circumstances alone will have a great tendency to change the 

 conformation and characteristics of a species. Thus, in cold countries, 

 the white prevails as a colour, and fur or wool as a coat. In 

 warmer climates, the brown prevails as a colour, and hair as a cover- 

 ing ; while in those absolutely hot, the dun seems to obtain as a colour, 

 and down as a clothing. So easy is the adaptation of organised beings 

 to the state in which they are placed, and so vast is the expansibility 

 of Nature, that she can extend or shorten, or increase or diminish con- 

 formation, so as to render it suitable to the wants, the happiness, and 

 the existence of the animal. . . . And it is possible that the influence 

 of a pasture may lengthen or shorten the horns that by breeding from 

 long or short-horned, or from hornless animals, the variety may be 

 perpetuated till ihey lose in the course of ages many of their original 

 characteristics. It is impossible, for instance, in Essex, to grow the 

 ox to the same size, other things being equal, as in the county of 

 Durham ; nor on the Ayrshire hills can he be produced in the same 

 form or stature as in the Devonshire valleys. The Highland Scot is 

 suited to the cold climate of the exposed and stormy North, and the 

 Shorthorn to the sunny Lowland pastures ; and who shall say that the 

 God of Nature has not impressed on those created beings the capability 

 of adapting themselves to His plastic handiwork, of developing their 

 tendency to follow the peculiarities of the situation in which they are 

 placed ? An elephant can never degenerate into a mouse, a cat never 

 improve into a tiger ; but a wild dun cow of Warwick may be the pro- 

 genitor alike of the thin, spare, delicate-looking Jersey and the flesh- 

 mountain ox of Durham." 



The same forcible writer concludes by quoting Dr. Pritchard, who 

 says : " In all our stock of domesticated animals we see profuse 

 and infinite variety, and in the races of wild animals from which 

 they originally descended we find a uniform colour and figure for 

 the most part to prevail. Domestication is to animals what culti- 

 vation is> to vegetables, and the former probably differs from the 

 natural state of the one class of beings in the same circumstances 

 which distinguish the latter from the natural condition of the other 

 class. The most apparent of these is the abundant supply of the 

 peculiar stimuli of each kind. Animals in a wild state procure a 

 simple and unvaried food in precarious and deficient quantities, and 

 are exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons. Their young are pro- 

 duced in similar circumstances to the state of seedlings which spring 



