DOMESTIC animals OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 12LI 
The collection of portraits having become somewhat numerous, 
Mr. Nicholson, R.S.A., has been employed in taking coloured 
drawings of them. These copies are exceedingly accurate, and do 
him much credit. From these drawings others have been taken 
on stone, and four or six of them will enrich every number of this 
work. 
Professor Low, who has so long and so creditably presided over 
the agricultural department of the University of Edinburgh, and 
with whom, in point of fact, the establishment of a public Agricul¬ 
tural Museum originated, is now engaged in perfecting the work, 
by giving what he terms “ Descriptive Memoirs” of the different 
breeds of cattle delineated in these pages. No man had a higher 
claim to the execution of this task, and few would have executed 
it so faithfully and so well. 
May the writer of this little sketch be permitted to express his 
hope that the time is not far distant when the southern metropolis 
may be permitted to boast of as noble a university and as splendid 
an agricultural museum as that which the northern one contains. 
The English Agricultural Society, continuing to repudiate all con¬ 
siderations of party politics, and devoting themselves exclusively to 
the improvement of the cattle and the soil of their country, will, ere 
long, be incited to commence and to complete an undertaking, in 
the promotion of which every good heart would rejoice, and which 
would ultimately become the boast and the blessing of the British 
farmer. 
The first portrait in the present number of our work is that of a 
cow of the wild and white forest breed, those which the ancient 
Britons, when they retired beyond the Severn, preserved from the 
Romans, and of whom mention is made in various periods of Cam¬ 
brian history. A few of them are preserved perfectly pure. This 
cow was bred at Haverford West. The breed possessed much 
beauty and was highly valued; but the practised eye will dis¬ 
cover the points, both before and behind, which would render it far 
inferior to the cattle of the present day. 
The second plate contains the black Pembroke breed. Portraits 
of a bull and cow are given, bred by Messrs. Ackland and Boul- 
ston. They are evidently a variety of the White Forest breed, 
but with many and valuable improvements, and they require only 
a better hind-quarter—although theirs is far superior to that of the 
White Foresters—to make them perfect of their kind. Their meat 
is beautifully marbled, they fatten kindly and almost everywhere, 
and they yield a fair quantity of milk. 
The third and fourth are splendid plates, and present us with 
some beautiful portraits of the West Highland breed, belonging to 
the Messrs. Campbell, Colonel M’Niel, and Mr. Maxwell. They 
need no comment of ours. 
