130 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



from it. He esteemed them quite as good beef 

 cattle in all, or nearly all, respects, but he 

 thought that the type was a very different one. 

 Most of -the cattle he had seen belonged to one 

 family, or more properly, group of families, 

 which had been so interbred as to be almost 

 one. Almost everyone conversant with Amer- 

 ican Short-horns remembered that these ani- 

 mals were, and their descendants are, of a 

 well-marked type, and that one in a measure 

 peculiar to them ; another and equally distinct 

 type being cultivated by other breeders; and it 

 also would have almost certainly struck this 

 English critic as a departure from the English 

 type. I should have described both of these 

 and two or three well-marked English types of 

 today, as well as the clearly-defined Aberdeen 

 Scotch, not so much as departures from an arch- 

 aic type as equally local special developments 

 of that type. I am inclined to think that there 

 are more points of resemblance in each of these 

 types to the old parent form, and each would 

 be measured more satisfactorily by the old 

 standard than by that of any of its contempo- 

 rary standards. This has simply resulted from 

 the nearly inevitable bending to surroundings. 

 It is under the rule of Nature harder to exactly 

 maintain any given form than to do anything 

 else. Progress or decline is the motto written 

 on all artificially modified forms. So even in 



