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In the Indian countries these varieties have received distinct names just as our breeds of dogs and an elephant is valued according to the breed or caste to which he belongs; for in India caste is a universal idea, even among animals. There are two principal castes the Koomareah, of princely race; and the Merghee, or hunting elephant.
The shepherd, in a smock, is spinning wool with a distaff; and the sheep feeding around him, though carefully modelled, are quite unlike any of the modern breeds. Many of the domestic sheep of hot countries are more slender and less woolly than the wild sheep of the mountains. The black-and-white Somali sheep, for instance, are as smooth as a pointer dog.
I do not think it breeds at present in any of the Islands, as I have not seen it anywhere about in the breeding-season since 1866, when I saw a pair near the cliffs on the south-end of the Island in June; but as the Raven is a very early breeder, these may have only been wanderers.
But birds breeding on precipices, and good fliers, are unlikely to be exterminated; and the common rock-pigeon, which has the same habits with the domestic breeds, has not been exterminated even on several of the smaller British islets, or on the shores of the Mediterranean.
The characteristics of certain breeds or families are so well marked, that, if an individual supposed to belong to any one of them were to produce an offspring not possessing them, or possessing them only in part, with others not belonging to the breed, it would be just ground for suspecting a want of purity of bloods.
It would be an interesting task to trace how far this contrast is the source of the various subsidiary types of the ideal where it breeds desire for a return to simplicity, of the realistic where the humour of it touches the imagination, and of the allegorical where it suggests satire on the corruption of an artificial civilization.
Even if this latter fact were found more strictly and generally true than seems to me to be the case, what does it show, but that some of our breeds originated there, four or five thousand years ago? But Mr.
Sir J. Sebright expressly experimentised for this object, and failed. Certainly, a breed intermediate between TWO VERY DISTINCT breeds could not be got without extreme care and long-continued selection; nor can I find a single case on record of a permanent race having been thus formed.
Nevertheless, all must admit that they are quite as capable of describing their particular breeds of animals as other nations; and, in fact, we might go farther, and say that they are much more competent to the task than English writers, judging from their extensive knowledge in comparative anatomy, and their long array of celebrated writers on natural history the Cuviers, Buffon, &c.
To-day Germany shouts in ecstasy that she is the chosen power of God; that her Kultur will regenerate the world. Let it first regenerate the "Augean Stable" known to the world as Germany. Without further comment readers are left to form their own opinion of a Press which breeds such filth, and the cultural level of a people which consumes such garbage.
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