CHAPTER XIX. 



ON BREEDING. GENERAL PRINCIPLES, IN-AND-IN BBEEDINU, 



EXAMPLES. 



Physiologically, this subject is first brought to our -notice 

 by the sacred historian, Moses, -who has narrated the manner in 

 which the patriarch Jacob, near four thousand years ago, retah- 

 ated the injustice of his father-in-law, by the use of peeled rods 

 to influence the colors of his cattle; and also by taking the 

 progeny of those of sound health as his own, and leaving the 

 weaker ones with Laban. Jacob was a shrewd physiologist, 

 and probably spent much of the time, during his years of servi- 

 tude in tending the flocks and herds at Padan-aran, in studied 

 observation of their natures and habits. Jacob's practice gives 

 us a hint, only, but that hint is the key to a wide field of inves- 

 tigation of the true science of cattle breeding, and caparble of 

 almost indefinite ramification into every department of animal 

 structure and physiology. 



Greek and Roman writers also, tell us of the improvement of 

 flocks and herds in their own times, by the careful attention of 

 herdsmen and shepherds. Their particular modes of improve- 

 ment are not all related, but the fact is recorded, and history, 

 from ancient days down to the present, establishes the fact, 

 that wherever agriculture had attained an advanced condition 

 with the people, their domestic animals shared in its improve- 

 ment. What the varieties, or breeds, of the ancient cattle were, 

 is not recorded in their chronicles, but at a later day we have 



