HISTORY. 265 



ward by the Ukraine, and the rich valley of the Danube, 

 through Hungary, the more fertile parts of Germany, part of 

 Denmark, Holland, and to England. In the richer parts 

 of other countries on either side of this tract, as in the Ma- 

 remma of Italy, and the finer valleys of Switzerland, and in 

 certain parts of Spain and France, are also to be found large 

 Oxen, the size of the animals always being in proportion to 

 the natural fertility of the pastures. Art, indeed, by sup- 

 plying cultivated food, can remedy the effects^ of natural 

 scarcity ; but, in a general sense, we find that always the 

 larger breeds are formed in countries of abundant herbage. 



The British Islands present, in the productiveness of the 

 soil, such extremes of fertility and barrenness, as enable us 

 to mark the constancy of this law in a greater degree perhaps 

 than in any other country of the same extent. Over the more 

 elevated parts of the country, where the heaths, carices, and 

 innutritious junci, form the principal part of the herbage, the 

 Oxen are of small stature : as the grasses and leguminous 

 herbage plants become mixed with the others, the size of the 

 Oxen becomes enlarged, and still more when artificial food is 

 added to the natural ; and in the richest plains of all, where 

 the natural productions of the soil, and the resources of con- 

 tinued cultivation, are combined, the animals acquire their 

 greatest development of form. The Ox of the Sutherland 

 mountains, and the Ox of the Yorkshire vales, present to the 

 eye a diversity of size and aspect, such as we might hold in 

 other cases to distinguish species; but these extremes are con- 

 nected by all the intervening gradations from the smallest to 

 the largest. Looking to bulk of body as a character, we may be 

 said to possess two general classes of breeds in this country ; 

 first, those which are proper to the more mountainous and less 

 fertile districts ; and, secondly, those which are proper to 

 the plains and richer country. The first class comprehends 

 the breeds of Wales, of the mountains of Scotland, and of the 

 high lands of Ireland, as the Pembroke, the West Highland, 

 the Kerry ; the second comprehends the Long-horned breed 



