Rise and Progress of Shorthorns. 327 



The bulls are used principally to " cross-bred," but also to 

 West Highland and polled cows. With the latter they make a 

 very beautiful cross, and correct th'e sluggish maturity of the 

 Galloway blood ; and an ox of this kind recently beat everything 

 for the Cup at Birmingham, and was the second best ox or steer 

 at Islington, when the winners were drawn out for the Gold 

 Medal. The Shorthorn West-Highland cross is also becoming 

 very popular. As yearlings, the produce are nearly as big as 

 their dams, and quite as hardy, but (unlike the shorthorn-poll) 

 the second cross is apt to fall off both in flesh and milk. The 

 best beast in the yard at Liverpool last Christmas was a four- 

 year-old bullock thus bred, and it produced 1,641 lbs. of beef 

 and tallow. 



Shorthorn crosses are creeping up the hill-sides in the North, 

 where it was once thought impossible for any beast but a West 

 Highlander or " Hieland Humley " to live. Even in the shire of 

 Angus, which Hugh Watson, of Keillor, made for more than 

 thirty years the great rallying ground of the polls, the farmers, 

 as in Morayshire, are very largely supplied with store calves and 

 yearlings each autumn from the milk valleys of Yorkshire and 

 Lancashire. Fifeshire cattle have retreated before them, and 

 lost their classes at the Highland Society, and the Lothian farmers 

 no longer look out keenly for the polls at Falkirk, whose two 

 autumn trysts furnish the surest evidence of shorthorn progress. 

 The polls have nearly disappeared from the Muir ; and the short- 

 horn crosses which form the staple of the supplies are bought up 

 to go north ; while the West Highlanders are sent south as 

 " fancy cattle " to the English parks. 



Falkirk is very largely supplied, not only with Yorkshire 

 calves, but capital shorthorn crosses from Ireland. Lord Ross, 

 of County Longford, imported Teeswaters into that country, 

 even before the Brothers Colling had made themselves a name. 

 The Chilton sale was, as we have shown, the great Irish starting- 

 point, but a few years before that Mr. Fitzgerald and Mr. Arch- 

 bold had purchased several animals from Mr. Champion, of 

 Blyth, and thus introduced for the first time pedigreed shorthorns 

 into the country. Now nearly 180 shorthorn bulls, and more 

 than half of them yearlings, may be seen at the Dublin Easter 

 show. The greater part of them are of Booth blood. This is 

 not to be wondered at, as for more than twenty years the best 

 Killerby and Warlaby bulls have been over there for a season, 

 until at last the English breeders, when the home supply fails or 

 is priceless, are fain to go over themselves in search of a " pure 

 Booth." 



France has been more or less a customer for several years, and 

 the breed has had no stouter champion than Mons. St. Marie. 

 The late king sent commissions to Burley, Ley fields, Wiseton, 



