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HEVIKW -THK NATURALIST S LIBRARY 7 . 
ticular district where they are most prevalent, and which variety 
in most instances is undoubtedly the most proper and suitable to 
the soil. 
In situations where they are brought from different parts of the 
kingdom, as at the London and Bristol markets, the different breeds 
appear, when contrasted, as so many distinct species. 
“ Long horned and short, of many a different breed, 
Tall, tawny brutes, from famous Lincoln levels 
Or Durham feed ; 
With some of those unquiet black dwarf devils, 
From nether side of Tweed 
Or Frith of Forth, 
Looking half wild with joy to leave the North.” 
In the different breeds of sheep, too, we have a striking example 
of the effects produced by pasturage, soil, and climate ; and we 
might carry on the comparison to swine, and find in their diversi- 
fied appearance in the various quarters of the globe the most 
extraordinary yet beautiful illustrations. 
We have also some examples in the vegetable world, exhibiting 
this influence in a striking point of view. Thus the crab of the 
woods has been transformed to the golden pippin — the sloe into 
the plum: flowers have changed their colours, and become double, 
and their new characters can be perpetuated by seed. A bitter 
plant, with wavy sea-green leaves, has been taken from the sea 
side, where it grew like wild charlock, has been transplanted into 
the garden, lost its saltness, and been metamorphosed into two 
distinct vegetables, as unlike each other as is each to the parent 
plant, the red cabbage and the cauliflower. These, and a multi- 
tude of analogous facts, are undoubtedly among the wonders of 
nature, and attest more strongly, perhaps, the extent to which 
species may be modified, than any examples from the animal 
kingdom. 
With these instances before us, we must by analogy admit, in 
its full force, the agency of climate, &c. on the horse also, in pro- 
ducing many of those extreme disproportions in size, form, and 
colour, that we meet with or know to exist. 
Having settled, we hope to the satisfaction of our readers, the 
question as to the claim of the horse to a pure originality of forma- 
tion, we will proceed to consider another opinion of the author’s, 
“ that our present domesticated horses, in the form we now have 
them, were never really wild.” We are inclined to agree with 
him in this opinion; and the example which we have already 
adduced, in the change produced in our domesticated animals in 
form, colour, size, structure, and other particulars, is quite suffi- 
cient to shew that there is a capacity in all species to accommodate 
