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XXIV. — Rise and Progress of Shorthorns. By Henry H. Dixon. 



Prize Essay. 



A quiet day with Bakewell and the Longhorns — The Hohlerness cows — 

 Tlie Teeswaters — Earhest bulls in the Shorthorn Herd-Book — Original 

 Durliam breeders — Tlie Maynards' bullocks — The Brothers Colling — 

 Tlie Durham ox — The BaiTupton and Ketton sales — Diftusion of short- 

 horns — Bates — • Mason — Whitaker — Sir C. Knightley — The Cherry 

 Cross — The Booths — Indirect causes of Shorthorn progress — Progress in 

 England — Neglect of milking qualities — Progress in Scotland — Eesult 

 of crosses with its native breeds — Aberdeenshire " cross-breds " — Effect 

 on Falkirk trade — Progress in Ireland, on the Continent, in the Colonies 

 — Fancy prices — ■ Conclusion. 



Modern history has been much too sparing of its prose pictures 

 of pastoral life. A great general or statesman has never lacked 

 the love of a biographer ; but the thoughts and labours of men 

 who lived " remote from cities," and silently built up an im- 

 proved race of sheep or cattle, whose influence was to be felt in 

 every market, have had no adequate record. One slight sketch 

 is nearly all that remains to us. We can go back, through its 

 guidance, to the days when Bakewell was a living name, and 

 Dishley the head-quarters to which all the best breeders of farm- 

 stock made resort. The scene rises up through the dim vista of 

 more than a hundred years. There are the willow clumps which 

 were cut on a seven years' rotation ; the water-meadows, which 

 grew four grass-crops in the season ; the mimic Dutch canal, 

 which supplied the sluices and carried boats laden with produce 

 and manure between different parts of the farm, and on whose 

 sluggish stream turnips were floated down to the stock, and 

 washed in the course of their sail ! ' Two-Pounder ' is brought 

 out by the shepherd, with all the respect due to such a patriarch 

 of the long-wools. Will Peet is on parade with the black cart- 

 stallion ; and John Breeder and Will Arnold, hazel-wand in 

 hand, have gathered the herd into a corner of the Long Pasture, 

 and listen eagerly for any word that may be dropped about their 

 favourites. In the business-room there are not only skeletons 

 but pickled carcases of sheep, whose points Avere most after their 

 breeder's heart ; but he shows with no less relish some beef 

 joints, the relics of his " Old Comely," which died at twenty-six, 

 and the outside fat of a sirloin fully four inches thick. 



The latter were his longhorn trophies, and no man could boast 

 of a herd with deeper flesh and lighter offal. In his eyes, the 

 breed was fated to represent the roast beef of Old England for 

 ever and aye ; and the thought that the very glory of their heads 

 would be objected to as taking up too much room in the straw- 



