412 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



and expectation. All over Great Britain, and in portions of the 

 European Continent, in the extensive ornamental parks of the 

 nobility, gentry, and great landholders, the choicer breeds of 

 neat cattle, and sheep, within the last half century, have taken 

 the place of comparatively worthless deer, (though the latter 

 may be beautiful objects in landscape effect,) and now add largely 

 to the ornamental, as well as economical keeping of their grounds. 

 In many instances, these nobility and gentry have been among 

 the most spirited and liberal promoters of improvement in the 

 various breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine, — everything of the 

 animal kind, in fact, which commends itself to their tastes, and 

 adds to the value of their agriculture. This taste has become 

 disseminated among the farmers and tenantry of the land, until 

 it has become a necessity in agricultural progress. The system 

 of cattle culture has thus changed from the oldtime practice, and 

 is still moving in a rapidly increasing course of improvement. 



It should be so in America. Here, we have broader and cheaper 

 lands, and of equal, or superior natural fertility. In many of our 

 States — the Western particularly — are spread numberless farms 

 in thousands of acres each, held and occupied by energetic, prac- 

 tical men, whose almost sole occupation is breeding, rearing, and 

 feeding of cattle. They seem, in that pursuit, "to the manor 

 born." It is the business, the pleasure of their lives. In com- 

 pany with their proprietors, we have rode and ranged over 

 numerous of these grand estates — on broad upland, and wide 

 river bottom; on the park-like oak openings; stretches of almost 

 boundless prairie; or what were once heavily wooded lands, 

 long since cleared by the axe and burning log-heap ; and over 

 all these luxuriant farms, speckled with herds, revelling in the 

 fullness and fatness of the land, the eye and the heart that would 

 not expand with the outpouring wealth lying around them, must 

 indeed be both shortsighted and impoverished. 



