428 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



improvement, other than was effected by special attention to 

 useful properties in stock selected for breeding. These breeds 

 may have been as good many centuries ago as they are now, and 

 of the same type in times long past as at the present day.^ 

 On the other hand, we cannot but agree with the opinion 

 expressed by Professor Owen {re Chartley cattle), but which we 

 think is applicable to all the white herds, namely, that they 

 are descended from domestic, or rather domesticated cattle, 

 introduced by the Romans, which became half -wild from breeding 

 together for many years in an unreclaimed state. 



We may take it as settled that the Urus had projecting horns 

 and a self-coloured dark coat with a stripe of white along the back. 

 Now in the old Craven breed of Longhorns, the horns projected 

 almost horizontally, though the present English Longhorns have 

 long spreading and sometimes drooping horns. Though the colour 

 of the breed varies a good deal, there is always the white mark 

 along the back. Some of the Irish cattle also, which two or 

 three decades ago were so largely brought to this country as 

 stores, were identified by the long white mark along the back; so 



1 Sir Ernest Clarke, the Secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of 

 England, in delivering a series of lectures on Agricultural History before 

 the University of Cambridge in 1899, is reported, in the second of the 

 series, to have discussed in detail the question of the breeding and fattening 

 of live stock in the latter part of the 17th century, and to have adduced 

 evidence to show that the carcases slaughtered at Smithfield were not, as 

 stated by M'Culloch, and, on his authority, by Macaulay, "diminutive" 

 as compared with the present day. He showed, according to the reaume in 

 our hands, that M'Culloch had quoted from Sir Frederic Eden, Eden from 

 Sir John Sinclair, and that none of them had appreciated the exact signifi- 

 cance of tables compiled by the famous economist, Charles Davenant, in a 

 rare pamphlet of 1710 in the British Museum. As a matter of fact, there 

 was reason for thinking that the carcases sold at Smithfield in 1710 were 

 as heavy as those of the present day ; though they did not, of course, 

 " cut up " so well as those of modern times. One of the great aims of the 

 famous breeder Bake well was to " get beasts to weigh where you want them 

 to weigh" in the roasting instead of the boiling pieces ; and the object of 

 all rearers of cattle had been to get shape rather than size, and quality 

 rather than quantity. Instances were given from books of the period, 

 and especially from Defoe's Tours, as to the size of oxen and sheep of 

 the day, and the lecturer concluded this part of his subject by stating 

 that those who fondly clung to old traditions might, he thought, console 

 themselves that " the roast beef of old England " was not absolutely a myth. 



