potatoe alone, which was introduced into common culture almost in our own day, is an acquisition which would have been cheaply purchased at any price. Among the animal tribes too, the poultry which stock our yards every where, and form the greatest delicacies of our table, are wholly of foreign origin. The horse also, now so peculiarly our own as to obtain the name emphatically of English, is known to have been imported into this island: nor have we reason to believe that the sheep, whose fleece in its raw or manufactured state, has long been the pride of this nation, can be called originally our own. The importation of small animals from distant regions is a matter of little difficulty when compared with those of a larger size, so that fewer opportunities have been given of bringing their respective merits to a comparative trial; and,, of course, prejudices have taken deeper root with regard to them, and erroneous judgments may be more difficult to eradicate. This will leave scope to improvements in future ages, of which we cannot now have a just idea; our businefs is, to prepare the way for others, as our predecessors have done for us; and to add as we go along, the little that falls within our reach, to the sum total of human knowledge.

In respect to covering, hair, fur, or wool, perhaps as great a diversity takes place among the different varieties of the bos tribe as among any of those already enumerated. The shortest and the closest hair I ever observed on any animal of so large a size was that of one of the varieties belonging to the division called Zebu. The hair did not exceed half an inch

to resemble a brush than any thing else, only that the
hairs, though stiff to a considerable degree, were yet
soft to the feel, and being placed obliquely were very
smooth to the touch when stroaked with the grain,
resembling in this respect a seal's skin, but the hair
was more than twice as thick. As the garden Teazel,
which possesses a quality somewhat of a similar kind,
has been found to be of very great utility when em-
ployed as a tool in the manufacture of cloth, it seems
to be by no means impofsible but that this skin in
its native state might be employed very beneficially
for some purposes in life, were it properly adverted to.
If firmly stretched upon a piece of wood, there seems
good reason to believe that it would form a very cheap
kind of brush that might be of great use for many pur-
poses in life, particularly for smoothing hats, and
other things of a similar kind; and a few strokes with
it against the grain would operate powerfully in raising
the particles of dust in cloth without tearing the fila-
ments asunder, the pile of which might then be deli-
cately smoothed by reversing that operation.
animal was a native of the East Indies, and affords
one of the numerous examples of the futility of that
rule which has been too often implicitly relied upon
as infallible; viz. that hot climates produce thin and
coarse hair. It was one of the most gentle and docile
creatures of the bos tribe that I have ever seen; of
very considerable size, and great bodily strength. It
had been imported from India by a gentleman in
Yorkshire. This was a bull, who, having had pro-
geny
in Britain both by his own breed and by the
native cows of this country, was growing old, and had

This

been sold to a man who led him through the country

as a show. His skin handled kindly, being soft, though firm; and he had all the habits and propensities of our common breed, in as far as I could observe; but was much more placid in his look, and more gentle than the common bull.

Of the cattle in this country, the short-horned Dutch or Holderness breed have also very short and smooth hair, though it is very thinly set upon the body. The Lancashire long-horned breed have longer and softer hair, gently waved. Some breeds of Highland cattle have hair still longer, softer, and closer than these. I have seen a variety of the Highland breed with a mane which became pretty long towards the head, with a tuft between the horns that sometimes nearly covered the eyes, which gave it a very fierce look and savage appearance. I have also seen another variety of Highland cattle, whose hair was of a pale lead colour, most beautiful to look at, and which was always soft and glofsy as silk. I have seen these in several different places; but every where the pile of the coat of this breed of cattle exhibited the same glofsy silky appearance wherever its native colour appeared undebased by an admixture with any other breed.

The Bison of Louisiana, commonly called the American Buffalo, carries a fleece still closer, longer, and softer than that of any of the varieties known in this country: nor is it sleek and waved, like the long hair already noticed, but is burly and close at the points, more nearly resembling the fur of other animals, or

has been often shorn or plucked from the skin, and worked up into stockings and other useful fabrics as wool; but, more usually, the hide is dressed with the fur on it, and is kept as a wrapper for travellers, which, though weighty, is so extremely warm as to be much in use by all the persons who travel through the internal parts of America in winter, and well answers the purpose of blankets among the woods in those desart regions. This variety of buffalo is an animal of great size, and ranges in vast herds in the large fertile plains on the banks of the Mississippi, where it often attains to such an unwieldly state of fatnefs, as to be unable to escape from the hunters, who slaughter them in great numbers merely for the sake of their tallow, tongues, and hides, leaving the carcase as a prey to wolves and other ravenous animals. Of its other qualities, particularly that of yielding milk, we are not as yet informed; as few attempts have hitherto been made to domesticate them, though this appears to be a task that may be accomplished with the greatest ease, by means of a natural instinct that seems to be in some measure peculiar to this animal; for when a female who has a young calf at her foot is killed, the calf, like the young elephant, and some other animals, will not desert her dam; nor does it attack her murderer, as the young elephant is said to do, but stands quietly by till the butcher has cut up the cow into quarters, and then follows whithersoever he chooses to conduct it. The reader will find this extraordinary fact stated more circumstantially than I have now done, in a letter from Mr. Turnbull to Mr. Mathews, in the eighth volume of the Correspondence of the Society at Bath, who farther states,

that when trained up in a domestic way, it is extremely docile; and so strong, when employed in draught, as to exceed, he says, two oxen of the common breeds of this country. These notices sufficiently point out this animal as a proper object for farther elucidation.

There is another variety of the bos tribe remarkable for its length of hair: it is found in the higher parts of India under the name of the Chittigong cow, and is supposed to be merely the Sarluc, or grunting ox of Thibet domesticated. With its distinctive qualities we are too little acquainted to be able to speak with confidence. All that is certain is, that, being a native of a cold climate, we have no reason to think it would not thrive here; and, being domesticated for profit, the probability is that it possesses some valuable peculiarities. It is said to be covered all over with a coat of very long hair that hangs down below its knees. It is uniformly black all over, except the mane and tail, and a ridge down the back, which are white. The hairs of the tail are very beautiful, and are much prized over all India for fly flaps; for which purpose they are mostly fitted to silver handles. In China, the hairs of the mane are dyed of a red colour, with which the natives form an ornamental tuft op the crown of their bonnets, so that it forms a beneficial article of traffic with that country. With the peculiarities of the rest of the fleece I am entirely unacquainted. This also is an article which evidently requires to be more fully investigated, and I shall esteem it a particular kindness if any of the readers of this work in India will favour me with whatever au