502 GOOD AND BAD POINTS OF CATTLE, AND 
therefore, had her put to a thorough-bred stallion, then travelling 
through this town. Whenever she was taken to be tried, she ad- 
mitted the horse throughout the whole of the season, until, at 
length, her owner lost all patience. Nevertheless, this mare 
foaled in due process to the first or second coition. 
The third case may, perhaps, be thought more unusual than 
the others. The groom of a nobleman, then resident near this 
place, called one morning in my yard, leading in his hand a fine 
mare, which he said he was about to take to a horse ten miles 
distant. She had been running out the whole of the winter, and 
little notice had been taken of her appearance. The groom called 
on his return, and said that she had been covered. Six weeks 
or two months afterwards, the same person came in great surprise, 
to inform me that, on going to the field the first thing that morn- 
ing, he found the mare with a newly-dropped foal at her foot. 
I laughingly said, it was the quickest affair of the sort that 
had come under my notice, but had no doubt a little inquiry 
would find a father for the colt, without saddling him on Hercules 
— the horse she was sent to. A slight examination established his 
descent, for he very strongly resembled a cart cob stallion, be- 
longing to a neighbouring farmer, and which was kept in a field 
adjoining the one in which the mare had been running in the pre- 
vious summer. 
Two days ago I was at a friend’s house — a large farmer — and 
particularly noticed a very fine cow in the yard. On expressing 
my praise of her appearance to the owner, he said, “ Yes, she is a 
handsome cow, but she is always a bulling. She would have 
taken the bull last year up to a month of her calving.” 
ON THE GOOD AND BAD POINTS OF CATTLE, AND 
ON THE FORMATION OF FAT AND MUSCLE. 
By Mr. Robert Read, F.S., Crediton . 
The skin or external envelope in the ruminantia herbivora is 
an important feature in developing the disposition of cattle to 
fatten, and is of much import to the farmer and grazier. 
A good skin is known by the familiar name of touch — that is, 
the animal should possess a mellow skin, with resiliency, mode- 
rately thick, yet loose and yielding to the fingers when gently 
elevated, and resuming its station with an elastic spring, as if 
there was underneath a tissue of wool impregnated with oil. 
The resilience of good skin in an animal depends on the organ- 
