324 Rise and Pror/ress of Shorthorns. 



spread broadcast, and wherever they have gone they have 

 generally superseded the native breed, or gradually improved it 

 away. Jobbers began at first to buy large lots in Durham and 

 Yorkshire, and to drive them south on speculation. They were 

 so eagerly looked for at the different fairs, or picked up by 

 farmers on the road, that before they had been many days on 

 march their owners often found themselves like generals without 

 an army, or with only the culls in their ranks. Railroads also 

 helped to bring out sales, and gave facilities to bull hirers and 

 bull and heifer buyers ; while the periodical publication of the 

 'Herd Ijook' has also tended in no slight degree to establish 

 an exchange of minds among breeders, and to concentrate atten- 

 tion on to different sorts of blood. With such a stimulus it is 

 not wonderful that the shorthorns have fairly outflanked the 

 Devons on the south side of their county and invested the greater 

 part of Cornwall, whose breeders have been fond of them, more 

 or less, since Mason's sale, and consider that they have "quite 

 stolen a year" by their use. Crossed with the Devon, they have 

 won a Smithfield gold medal ; they are gradually encroaching on 

 the county limits of the Sussex, and on the "blood-red dairies" of 

 Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk ; in the cheese districts of Cheshire, 

 Gloucestershire, and Wilts, scarcely any other breed is used ; 

 and it is calculated by experienced Smithfield salesmen that 

 rather more than two-thirds of the average number of beasts 

 (331,164) which came to the London market in 1863-64, were 

 either pure shorthorns or shorthorn crosses. In reference to this 

 increase, an old English breeder writes : " When I began, there 

 was no pure bred shorthorn bull within seventeen miles of me, 

 whereas now there is one in every parish." 



It is nevertheless very generally considered that beef-making 

 has been reduced to a science with pure shorthorns, and that milk- 

 yielding has been neglected. Attention has also been drawn to 

 the fact that many of the London dairymen are using Dutch cows. 

 It may, however, be urged in reply, that the largest Scottish 

 dairyman regularly uses shorthorn bulls to cross his Ayrshires and 

 other cows, and that Dutch cows newly imported can be bought 

 at about half the price of common dairy cows. Still, good milk- 

 ing pedigrees do not command an extra price, and, in fact, any 

 allusion to them in a sale catalogue is rather regarded as an 

 apology for doubtful or unfashionable blood. " Something to give 

 milk for the house" is too often spoken of as a mere humble 

 adjunct, and "not worth dwelling upon," at the end of a row 

 of high-bred cows and heifers, many of which are systematically 

 dried off to keep them in bloom for shows or visitors, while 

 their calves are provided with a nurse. A young heifer is 

 selected with a view to well-covered flesh-points, early maturity, 



