522 THE CORRECT PRINCIPLES OF BREEDING ANIMALS. 
logians. Either proposition is subject to objections, philoso- 
phical as well as theological ; but the fact is yet unsettled. 
We know that climate will do much: it converts hair into 
down — down into wool — wool into fur. There is a plasticity 
in nature — a tendency to accommodate herself to the circum- 
stances in which she is placed, which, though slow and painful, 
is perhaps the most wonderful, if investigated with patience, 
of all her operations. What but climate is it that gives the 
curly, shaggy coat to the animal which wanders northward to 
the Highland top] What is this but nature’s covering, to de- 
fend her from the wintry blast] 
Then again, herbage and food. Take only a twin calf: give 
the one his mother’s milk for six months; and feed the other 
on hay tea, and linseed : the one will be a large thriving 
animal ; the other shrunk, and meagre, and stunted. It is the 
effects of its pasturage. It has not the exact food calculated to 
develop its qualities ; and it shews its want — not by dying— 
but by overcoming all in an altered form. Now, take the same 
twins: leave one in the fertile valley of the Tees, and drive the 
other to the barren Jersey. The one has an alluvial soil de- 
posited by the debris of a thousand generations : it browses on 
the grass once the bed of the wide flowing river, filled up with 
the finest and most soluble particles of earth washed out of the 
virgin soil before it was cultivated, mixed with the phosphated 
earth from the washings of the mountain limestone ; and hence 
he had plenty, and slept; he had abundant in ammonia for his 
flesh, and phosphates for his bones ; he lived luxuriously and 
easily, and he got somnolent, and lethargic, and fat! He grew 
in size and in bulk — the one as regards his height, and the 
other his thickness; and hence in his breed was formed the 
Teeswater race. 
The other had to pick up a scanty subsistence on the barren 
rocks. He had long to browse for a scanty morsel : his grass 
was poor and innutritious ; and he had to be roaming all day, 
and skipping from height to height, to attain a meagre portion. 
Here he was active and thin ; he was small and flat in his 
muscles. Animals of this kind were bred from, and they be- 
came more and more adapted to their climate, and soil, and cir- 
cumstances. But his young could barely live on this poor 
herbage : hence more milk was required to sustain them — the 
converse of the imaginary compeer in Teesdale; and the one is 
a good milker — the other a bad one. 
It would seem, you can never violently amalgamate materials 
so different. 
Having alluded to the effects of cross-breeding on a race of 
animals, and the danger of any violation of extreme tendencies 
