20 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



very difficulty of the task, lifts the artist and 

 his art at once to the highest plane. He who 

 moulds the counterfeit of life may, indeed, be 

 the artist of no mean art; but surely thrice 

 greater he who with no less skill manipulates 

 the complex nature of a living being, producing 

 a superior form and one in conformity with 

 the ideal in his mind. Such a view is far from 

 exaggerated. The world is full of countless 

 varieties of a single species of domesticated 

 animals which are only modifications wrought 

 out by man's ingenuity. The various breeds of 

 cattle, horses, sheep, dogs, fowls, pigeons, and 

 many other animals, not to speak of the infinite 

 beauty and variety of the variations produced 

 in the vegetable kingdom by the magic of man's 

 skill, attest the marvelous extent to which man 

 has moulded and is still moulding the domesti- 

 cated animals. 



The breeding of cattle is, then, if rightly fol- 

 lowed, a true art. It may sink very low. The 

 artist may be only a caricaturist. But if the 

 knowledge and the power which are free to 

 every man who chooses to make them his are 

 properly applied the breeder will not be un- 

 worthy of the name. 



The fine arts then are not all the arts. And 

 even in the fine arts the final execution of some 

 masterpiece is not all the art. The paints 

 must be mixed, the canvas prepared, and many 



