Page:Cynegetica.djvu/101

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Hounds.
85

all this variety we behold in them. Is either the natural product of the climate, or the accidental effect of ſoil, food, or ſituation, or very frequently the iſſue of human care, curioſity, or caprice. Every Huntſman knows that a vaſt alteration may be made in his breed, as to tongue, heels, or colour, by induſtriouſly improving the ſame blood for twenty or thirty years; and what nature can do, (which wiſely tends to render every kind of creature fit for the country where it is to inhabit, or be employed,) is manifeſt by this: that a couple of right Southern Hounds, removed to the North, and ſuffered to propagate, without art or mixture, in a hilly mountainous country, where the air is light and thin, will, by ſenſible degrees, decline and degenerate into lighter bodies, and ſhriller voices, if not rougher coats. The like alterations may be obſerved in the breeds of ſheep, horſes, and other cattle, and indeed in every other ſpecies ſubject to the art and intereſt of man, and employed to generate at his choice and humour. Even in thoſe animals that are reckoned among the feræ natura, every

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traveller