3-003-914 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Animals at the Florence Exposition: pair of oxen from the Royal Domain of the Val de Chiana - Ox of Pisan race - sheep of the Ginestre d'Artiminio race, and Merino, 1861. 'There are three or four yoke of oxen from the Val di Chiana of a size never seen in England. Doubtless some of the Smithfield prize beasts may be as heavy or even heavier than these mammoth cattle, but the framework of the skeleton in the Chiana race is larger than anything of the kind among ourselves. The colour of these giants is invariably that beautiful dove colour, or cream colour, which the same race bore in the days of Virgil. In fact, some four fifths of the beasts at the exposition are of this classical colour, which is almost universal throughout Central Italy...Sheep...[are] evidently kept, in the generality of cases, for the wool-merchant rather than for the butcher'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.