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shire, might perhaps improve the form of the Galloway cattle, which are lighter in
The Doctor remarks, very circumspectly, concerning the breed in that island:‘ Of their black cattle, some are with- out horns, called by the Scots humble cows, as we call a bee an humble bee, that wants a sting. Whether this difference be specific, or accidental, though we enquired with great diligence, we could not be informed. We are not very sure that the bull is ever without horns, though we have been told that such bulls there are. What is produced by putting a horned and an unhorned male and female to- gether, no man has ever tried, that thought the result worthy of observation.” Jour. to the West.!sl. of Scotl. Perhaps, as some suppose, he might conjecture that the result would be an unicorn. Tho? strangely ignorant about the nature and origin of horns, yet another sgavans might be found to keep him in countenance. The celebrated Count de Buffon per- mitted, it is said, his great work on Natural History to pass through two, if not three editions, before he corrected his mis- take about cattle shedding their horns—one into which an in« telligent writer on husbandry in this country seems also to have fallen.‘ Cattle,’ says the latter,‘shed their horns at the end of three years; and towards the root of the second set of horns, there is a kind of ring or joint, formed every year that the animal lives thereafter: So that, reckoning three years for the top, or plain part of the horn, and one for
every interval between the rings or joints, the most ignorant
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