I always look upon the Christmas Cattle Show of the Smithfield Club as a scientific delight. Breeding is a most serious branch of scientific knowledge, held by many people (of whom I am one) to be of more importance to statesmen, politicians, and philanthropists than any other kind of knowledge, and yet almost absolutely neglected and completely ignored except by our farmers and horticulturists. When examining in turn the splendid animals at Islington I have felt indignant that it should be not improbable that, owing to ignorance and neglect in official quarters, the long matured traditions and built-up skill of our cattle-breeders will be destroyed, crushed out of existence by huge, devastating capitalist “combines.” Soon we shall not get the beef we wish for, but we shall have to take whatever inferior stuff the giant monopolist chooses to force on us—or go without! Our wonderful stock, so patiently and happily bred, the envy of the world, will disappear, and our breeders forget their art. We shall none of us in Britain know more about prime beef, roasts, grills, and marrow-bones than do the people of Europe or the eaters of terrapin and soft-shelled crabs.

It is wonderful that man, by deliberate choice in selecting the sires and dams, has been able to produce such widely-different races as the short-horn, the Highland and the Sussex breed, and not only to produce them, but to keep them there generation after generation. In Nature, no such deviations are allowed—her motto is “One species, one shape,” which is only relaxed so as to allow a few geographical varieties. It is man who makes all these strange breeds, just as he has made such a queer, irregular, varied lot of creatures from the human stock. Withdraw once and for all man’s guiding “intelligence,” or perversity, if you choose so to call it, and all these cattle would in a few hundred years revert to one form, nearly (but not quite) the same as that they came from. So, too, the Sheep; so, too, the Pigs. And man himself, if one could poison him universally with a mind-destroying microbe, would become a beautiful, healthy, silly creature, dying at first by millions annually, and at last represented by a hundred thousand unvarying specimens, inhabiting the warm but healthy corners of the earth, aimlessly happy, free from disease, neither increasing nor decreasing in number. It is legitimate, and is a means of examining the whole problem of man’s history, to inquire whether we have reason or not to suppose that, were intelligent man thus removed arbitrarily and completely from the scene, a new “lord of the world” would arise, by normal evolutionary process. A bird, an elephant, a rat, might give rise to the new line of progressive development, and, unchecked by man, once jealous and repressive, but now down-fallen, this new stock might acquire such brains and wits as we men now boast of, and people the earth. You never can tell! But it is not the business of science to expatiate on such possibilities.

The domesticated cattle of Europe are of very ancient prehistoric origin. They are for convenience called “Bos taurus,” and seem to be derived from the huge Bos primigenius or Aurochs, the Urus of CÆsar, which was wild in Central Europe in his time, and from the Indian Bos indicus—which is represented by the Indian and African native breeds of “humped” cattle. It is, however, very difficult to trace most of man’s domesticated animals or his cultivated plants to their original wild forms and original habitation. At the Cattle Show we only see British and Irish breeds, and only those cattle bred as meat-makers—the Highland, the Welsh, the Shorthorns, the polled Angus, the South Devons, the Hereford, the Sussex, the Galloway, the Dexter. But there are other British breeds famous for their milk-producing quality, such as the Guernseys and Jerseys, whilst in Hungary, Italy, and Spain they have magnificent breeds of great size, and often with truly splendid spirally-turned horns (e.g. the Spanish), which are used for ploughing and carting, and are fattened, killed, and eaten after doing ten years’ good work. These fine creatures are not seen in England. They come nearest to the extinct Aurochs, which was, however, bigger than any of them. It, too, existed in prehistoric times in England, and we find its bones in the gravel of the Thames Valley. The last aurochs, or wild bull of Europe, was killed in Poland near the end of the seventeenth century. The wild Chillingham cattle are Roman cattle run wild. Many of these breeds and the bones of the aurochs to compare as to size may be seen in the north hall of the Natural History Museum, where I commenced a collection of domesticated breeds of cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, &c., eight years ago. Chillingham cattle are to be seen in the Zoological Gardens.

An interesting fact in this connection is that the splendid bull which is kept in half-wild herds in Spain for the purpose of “bull-fights,” is of a totally different race from that of the big, long-horned agricultural cattle. It may be seen at Cromwell-road, a specimen killed in the ring having been procured at my request and presented to the museum through the kindness of the British Consul at Seville. The Spanish fighting bull is, curiously enough, more like our Channel Island milk-producing cattle than any other. It probably came to Spain from North Africa—but there seems to be no record or history concerning it—and if there were it would probably be a fantastic invention. It seems that only the bulls of this special breed can be played with and dazzled by the matador’s red cloak. A Scotch bull was once brought by sea to Seville and introduced to the arena. He paid no attention to cloaks, red or otherwise, but always went straight for his man. It is stated that he was soon left quite alone in the ring! The native African cattle (of Indian origin) at Ujiji and in Damaraland have the biggest horns of any true Bos—as much as 13 1/2 ft. along the curve from point to point. We have to distinguish from our own cattle, for which there is no name except “Bos taurus,” for neither ox, bull, cow, heifer, nor steer will do—the other bovines—the buffaloes, the yak, and the bison—besides those great beasts the gayal and the gaur of India and the banting of Malay. All these may be seen and studied either in the Museum or the Zoological Gardens.