Lect. VI.] IMPROVEMENT OF BREEDS. IGo 



very great. Some three-year-old Colts were turned 

 for the winter into an excellent pasture, with the kind 

 of grass they prefer, — close and velvety, — for they 

 have a most accurate bite, and are not like the Cow, 

 who will eat long, coarse stuff, its length helping her, 

 she ha\dng no upper incisors. In the Cjuick hedges 

 bounding this pasture, the pollard ash- trees had recently 

 been beheaded for poles, and the ''top and lop" had been 

 made into faggots. These trees are very Ijitter, and 

 full of potash salts, besides ; nevertheless, the Colts 

 preferred this woody diet to the grass, and made a clean 

 riddance of the firewood, only leaving the white centre 

 of the largest boughs. The Ehinoceros is said to tear a 

 young tree into laths, and then to eat the laths as we 

 should eat celery. But the magnificent dentition of the 

 Cow, the Horse, and the Ehinoceros has been preparing ; 

 — this is no fable ; the palaeontologist knows if this be true 

 or not — ever since the time when the cattle were none 

 of them any better, and many not so good, as the 

 existing Tapir. It is not true that nature " does not 

 make her works for man to mend." I have been familiar, 

 from my childhood, with the method by which the l)reeds 

 of the existing cattle are mended by us. During the long- 

 Tertiary epoch, during which nature, herself, has been 

 develojDing the teeth and jaws of the improving Eutheria, 

 she has also, at the same time, wondrousl}^ perfected 

 their gait and carriage. No movement of a dancer is 

 more elegant than the ordinary walk of a high-bred 



