368 THE OX. 



termed a breed. Length and grossness of horns may be sup- 

 posed to be connected, in certain circumstances, with the 

 nature of the pastures and the humidity of the climate. A 

 moist climate tends to produce thickness of skin and length 

 of hair ; and the corneous system is so connected with the 

 cuticular, that it is reasonable to believe, that what affects 

 the skin and its covering, may exercise an action on the 

 parts connected with them. The true Long-horns seem to 

 have been the inhabitants of the western parts of the British 

 Islands. They extended nearly over all the plains of Ireland, 

 and the greater part of the mountains, and yet form the pre- 

 vailing race of that country. In England, they occupied Lanca- 

 shire, extending northward into Cumberland and Westmore- 

 land, and southward through Cheshire and Shropshire, to 

 the districts on the Severn, and even into Somersetshire, 

 where the traces of them still exist in the higher country. 

 From the mouth of the Severn they extended inland through 

 the midland counties even to Leicestershire. They were 

 found, and are yet reared, in Derbyshire, and partially occu- 

 pied, and still occupy, the bleak range of heathy hills which 

 extend from that county northwards, and which divide the 

 more westerly and humid country on the Atlantic from the 

 eastern and drier on the German ocean. But, on the eastern 

 slope of this range of hills, they gradually diminished in 

 numbers, until the traces of them were lost ; and they were 

 not found within the period of any records in the south- 

 eastern counties of the Chalk. Although they had stretched 

 through the midland counties as far to the eastward as Lei- 

 cestershire, yet, as they extended eastward, their characters 

 appear to have undergone a progressive change ; for, al- 

 though Leicestershire became in time the centre of a highly 

 cultivated breed of Long-horns, the older cattle which pos- 

 sessed it seem either to have been a mixed race, or to have 

 deviated greatly from the type of the true Long-horns of the 

 western counties. Thus the Long-horned Breed appears 

 to have been derived from the western and more humid 



