3-003-910 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The cattle department of the Italian Exposition, Florence, 1861. 'This building is now filled from end to end with bulls, cows, heifers, and oxen of every race known from the slopes of the Alps to the promontory of Sicily; and the long, vanishing lines of perspective, the mellowed light occasioned by the precautions taken to provide against the heat...and the peasants of different provinces lying about among their animals on the heaps of forage, produce together a scene more picturesque than might have been supposed possible from the elements composing it...Of all the hundreds of cattle of very different races gathered together here, there is probably no one beast which has been bred with a view to human food. The main and paramount object of the Italian peasant is to have animals adapted for labour...Nevertheless, although breeding with a view to beef is as yet quite in its infancy in Italy, if not altogether unknown there, it is a certain fact that the beef met with in the Tuscan markets is very far superior to that found in any part of France'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.