l ; 04 CATTLi: AND DAIRY FARMING. 



ever has ever been paid to the improvement of the brood, and the 

 horned cattle which to-day feed upon the natural pasturage of the pain- 

 pa> are the descendants of those with which the country was originally 

 stocked. 



INTRODUCTION OF HoRNED CATTLE INTO THE RIVER PLATE. 



This occurred about the year l">.~iO. According to the American ar- 

 chives in Seville,* J)on Pedro de .Mendoza was the lirst who introduced 

 horned cattle into the regions of t he Plate. lie brought for the colony 

 which he founded sixteen cows, two bulls, thirty-two horses and mares, 

 twenty goats, forty slice]), and eighteen dogs. It is further related, ac- 

 cording to details given by liny J)iaz de Guzman, that Ayola and Mar- 

 tine/, do Irala, the chiefs of the expedition, took several of those animals 

 with them to the interior, and that others were lost in the wastes which 

 an- found in the delta of the Parana Uiver near the present village of 

 San Fernando. .V little later. bV>;>, two brothers named Goes, who 

 came in company with Alvar Nunez Tabeza de, Vae-a, from P>razil, 

 brought their cattle, consisting of eight cows and a bull, with them to 

 Asuncion, Paraguay, where the new acquisition was received with 

 great enthusiasm. 



From these two sources have descended the horned cattle which in in- 

 numerable herds now form the stock of the Argentine plains. From 

 that time to the present day the increase has been spontaneous, the 

 niiid climate and succulent grasses of the pampas being all the condi- 

 tions required for their rapid multiplication and diffusion. Dut thus 

 left to themselves, they have been permitted to degenerate by continu- 

 ous broeding-in, without any elfort ever having been made to improve 

 their original good qualities, until now, after a, lapse of three hundred 

 years, they are without any of the. characteristics which would make 

 them a desirable acquisition to cattle-breeders, unless perhaps it be the 

 quality of their hides, winch the rough life they have encountered have 

 made stronger and tougher than most hides which iind their way to 

 the markets of the world. Jn other respects, however, they have little 

 to recommend them in countries where- stock-breeding has had any de- 

 velopment. 



AVI LI) CATTLE OF T1IE PAMPAS. 



The cattle of this country came originally from the south of Spain, 

 and are said to exhibit still Ihe characteristics of the breed of that lo- 

 ealily. the range between the L'L! and -1- of south latitude, in this 

 country not having exercised much influence, upon them. Indeed 

 they are as robust on the plains of Oran, the borders of the Verm ijo. 

 and in the subtropical forests of IMisiones as they are on the pampas 

 of liucnos Ayres. Their size, however, depends very considerably on 

 their pasturage. It is smaller on the dry and arid plains of Catamarea 

 and Santiago del Fstero, and larger on the luxuriant grasses of J5uenos 

 Ayres an; I Panda Oriental. It was not until the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century that their diffusion over the pampas of Puenos Ayres 

 began to attract attention. The Indians, who inhabited those plains, 

 ^i v- ho up to the time, of the conquest had no domestic animal, soon 

 learned the value of the horse, and used it fearlessly in their chase of 

 tin- deer, the ostrich, and the guanacho, but they paid little attention 

 ><> the new eattle, \\liich wore increasing so rapidly around them. In- 

 deed it appears that while they used t he flesh ol horses, whet her domes- 

 t i<' or \\ ild. f./r their ordinary food, they had i"> relish for beef, and it is 

 only .- i IK-;- a e'unpai at ively recent period that, the Pehuenche.s and other 



* Duminguez'H History ol'thu Argentine Republic, 



