232 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



which effect they attribute to the clime. But if poffi- 

 bly in Canada the oxen have loft part of their corpu- 

 lence, as count de ButFon affirms, and if their flefh has 

 become fibrous in Hifpaniola, as Mr. de Paw would in- 

 finuare, this at leaffc is not the cafe in the greater part of 

 the countries of the new world, in which the multitude 

 and fize of thofe animals, and the goodnefs of their flefh, 

 demonflrate how favourable the climate is to their pro- 

 pagation. Their prodigious multiplication in thofe coun- 

 tries is atteiied by many authors both ancient and mo- 

 dern. Acofta relates that in the fleet in which he 

 returned from New to Old Spain, in 1587, about fixty 

 years after the firft bulls and cows had been tranfported 

 to Mexico, they carried with them from that country 

 fixty-four thoufand three hundred fixty ox hides ; and 

 from Hifpaniola alone, which Mr. de Paw believes fo 

 unfavourable to the propagation of thofe quadrupeds, 

 thirty-five thoufand four hundred and forty-four ox 

 hides. We do not doubt, that if the number of bulls 

 and cows carried from the old continent to the new, was 

 compared with the number of hides returned by Ame- 

 rica to Europe, there would be found more than five 

 millions of hides for every one of thofe animals. Val- 

 deobro, a Dominican Spaniard, who lived fome years in 

 Mexico, towards the middle of the laft century, relates, 

 as a fact which was notorious that the cows belonging to 

 D. G. Ordugna, a private gentleman, yielded him in 

 one year thirty-fix thoufand calves (a) 9 which produce 

 could not arife from a herd of lefs than two hundred 

 thoufand bulls and cows taken together. At prefent 

 there are many private perfons who«are owners of herds 



of 



(a) In his work entitled Gobierno de Animates, lib. iv. cap. 34. 



