28 THE STOR Y OF THE JERSEY HERD 



cattle and their relations are the most improved type of 

 the "bos longifrons," or smaller domesticated race.' It 

 remains to be shown how little * Druidical ' cows bred 

 on an islet have not deteriorated like Shetland ponies or 

 Iceland cows, but have developed into the creatures 

 now eagerly bought not only by English gentlemen and 

 English country ladies, for the Jerseys are pre-eminently 

 * ladies' cows,' but in North America, Germany, South 

 Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and recently in Brazil, 

 where some, lately imported, walked two hundred miles 

 through the forest, and arrived in good condition at 

 their destination. The history of the breed in the 

 Jersey Herd-Book gives no a 'priori theory for this 

 process, but we incline to think that it has a natural 

 explanation. The people were industrious and intensely 

 practical. The area which they inhabited was very 

 small, and though the population was large, every part 

 of the little island, and every cow on it, might well be 

 familiar, either in fact or by reputation, to every 

 possible purchaser of cattle on the spot. Being all 

 neighbours, and knowing the merits or failings of each 

 other's cattle, a bad cow had no chance of finding a 

 purchaser, and its calves went to the butcher. ' Natural 

 selection ' was at work in this case through the agency 

 of man. Then the inhabitants of the island caught, 

 quite early in the last century, a violent fit of the ' cow- 

 fancying ' mania, which Hindoos have magnified into a 



