angular, but are free-givers of butter-producing
milk. An alliance between one of our curly-
coated North Devons and one of these patient
little red cows, would enable the Agricultural
Society of Schleswig to add first-class oxen to
the exportations which have grown into
importance, and have found their way to Hull,
Grimsby, and Lowestoff since Denmark was
fortunate enough to enter into a railroad and
steamboat alliance with Peto, and Company.

Holland comes next, with her great, long-legged,
large-stomached cows, black and white,
red-white, and all white or all black, which are
familiar to us in Cuyp's landscapes; they are
fed in summer on the rich, coarse grass of the
polders; stabled in winter, and supplied with
grains of true schiedam; currycombed and
made cleanly to an extent which nothing less
well taught than a Dutch cow could endure.
Here we have milk again; but this time
milk for cheese—the famous cannon-ball
Dutch cheese that rolls all round the world
with detriment only to weak digestions.
On Dutch feeding, these huge cows fill pail
after pail of a thin quality of milk; but they
break the heart of an English feeder, and eat
and eat and eat, without accumulating on
their bones either fat or flesh. Therefore
are they favourites in town dairies, where
quantity not quality is the object; where
the milking operation is performed thrice a
day, and where food is supplied without
measuring quantities. But, a Norfolk or
a Lincoln farmer would as soon see a boa
constrictor, as a Dutch heifer or ox in his
winter yard, feeding among his Scots, his
Devons, his Herefords, and his Shorthorns.
In Paris, indeed, it is not always safe
to have a Dutch cow; for, on one occasion
the officer who, armed with a scientific instrument,
protects the Parisians from the diluent
produce of the cow-with-the-iron-tail,
dipped into the pail of the unfortunate
possessor of a Dutch cow (the best pail-filler
in his shippon), and found an unlawful ten
per cent. of water. Thereupon followed a
procès verbal and a fine; for, red tape, not
confined to England, held that cows had no
business to give more than the quantity of
water in milk which is allowed by municipal
ordonnance.

Leaving the huge, parti-coloured, hungry
cattle of Dutchland, with their admirable
dairymen, we skip the Rhine provinces.
We turn with pleasure to Switzerland;
where, with the help of watch manufactures,
emigrating labour, immigrating capital, and
summer harvests from travellers in search
of picturesque emotions, the people have
been able to carry to perfection the only
system of stock and dairy culture possible in
such a country, and have not been dragged
down to the level of the peasant proprietors
and metayers of the south of France, or the
potato-fed boors of Germany.

The Swiss department of the Exhibition
was beautifully got up, for very good reasons.
Several eminent cow-dealers were there with
their stock—the Andersons and Quartermains
of bovine Swissland, besides others, who
exhibited for honour and glory, prizes and profit.
All the associates of the Ranz des Vaches
were assembled under the Parisian roof,
except the mountains; these included milk,
butter, and cheese, but no signs of beef in
the English sense: that is to say (to use the
words of the Devon breeder when explaining
the merits of his favourites to her
Majesty), there were too much threepenny and
not enough ninepenny. Indeed, we doubt if
there were any ninepenny at all. There were
the cowherds, most of them very ugly fellows,
not the least like our notions of William Tell
in fancy costumes on fête days; there were
the nicely-carved one-legged stools, with
straps for carrying them across the milker's
shoulders when he travels up to the luxuriant
grassy valleys in summer time; there were
buckets, carved too, and inlaid with brass
and all sorts of ornaments, fashioned out of
horn and wood by the ingenious cowkeepers
in their winter evenings. There were
belts of leather a hand broad, embroidered
in red, yellow, blue, cowrie shells and brasswork,
fit for a bishop's tomb, with mottos in
Swiss, German, or patois, to these were
suspended huge bells; the ornament in summer
of the bull who leads the herd, or of the
cow who honourably distinguishes herself
by giving an extra half-dozen quarts a day.
But, a British invasion is conquering the
land of Tell; and, according to the opinion
of the Swiss commissioner, in a few years
Berne and Fribourg, and all the dappled
races, will have contracted British alliances
and have sacrificed their national
independence to prejudices in favour of roast
and boiled.

Switzerland owns and gives name to one
breed, the Schwitz, which is the type of a
bovine variety that we may trace throughout
Europe—one of the most picturesque and
one of the best dairy breeds, but, in no
manner, a beef-maker. We seem to see a
relation of the Schwitz in a dark dun
Alderney; the same fine, deer-like head, the
same dark-tipped horns and bushy black-
tipped tail, fine muscular legs, full bounteous-
looking udder; both have the look, in colour
and form of a wild animal, yet both have a
perfectly amiable and domesticated expression
of countenance. The true Schwitz has a
dark line, gradually melting to a fawn colour,
down the back; is much larger and more
active than the Alderney; and would seem
perfectly in keeping with the landscape of
some northern rugged wooded parl of vast
extent. You may follow the breed along the
Alps under various names—sometimes smaller,
sometimes a little lighter in colour;
occasionally varying to grey—up to the Styrian
mountains; and there you find yourself in
full dispute with the German agricultural
professors, who claim the honours of