122 WHITE FOREST BREED. 



othei' breeds. According to Low, individuals were 

 to be met Avith in 1845, in tlie county of Pembroke, 

 in no ways distinguishtible from the wild cattle of 

 the Parks, ^° and Alton speaks of their resemblance to 

 the common cattle of 1750. We have ourselves seen 

 in America, cattle which were pure white with red 

 ears, and even polled. 



The only explanation we can offer for the vari- 

 ations between the herds of forest cattle, and the 

 tendency towards variation, which seems from our 

 account to have been ever strong, is that those, as 

 well as the domestic cattle of this region, are off- 

 shoots from the same original stock, the wild ox of 

 the past, but that those races we call domesticated, 

 as the A3-rshire, the Angus, the Galloway, the High- 

 land, and others, have been influenced to a greater 

 extent by the arts of civilization, the conscious or 

 unconscious breeding for certain uses, and the effects 

 of crossing, than these inhabitants of the parks. 



On this view the White Forest Breed is a wild 

 animal, a descendant, with now and then a bar sin- 

 ister, of the wild breed ; and the domesticated races 

 of the country are likewise their descendants, but 

 with an ancestry hopelessly confused and intermixed 

 by outside crosses and influences. 



»" Animals, 296. 



