34 Lincolnshire Med Shorthorns. 



further North, and in that rich part of Yorkshire called 

 Holderness they are mucli the same as those of which we 

 have been speaking." When he paid the county a visit again 

 in 1784, as he records in a second edition of his book, published 

 in 1792, he found a great improvement in the cattle, chiefly by 

 means of the purchase of bulls and heifers from the counties of 

 Durham and York, on both sides of the Tees, where the best 

 were confessedly bred. The cattle we then imported from the 

 Continent were, there is little doubt, of the type seen in the 

 pictures by Paul Potter, Rubens, Cuyp, and Teniers, in which 

 an improved Shorthoz-n is depicted. Mr. William Torr, of 

 Aylesby Manor, Lincolnshire, who travelled in Holland and 

 visited Dtrecht Fair in 1838, saw a large number of cattle of 

 the ordinary Shorthorn type. He said they were rare milkers, 

 had tolerable formation, a good skin, mellow handle, and nice 

 waxy horns ; they were also of every variety of colour. During 

 the early pai't of the last century the designation '• Dutch " 

 still adhered to Lincolnshire cattle in the London market. 

 Youatt has recorded that the Shorthorns of Lincoln were large 

 and coarse, particularly about the head and horns, high on the 

 leg, with hips and loins wide and approaching to ruggedness. 

 They were altogether a coarser type than the improved Durhams, 

 or even the common Holderness stock of his time, and they 

 demanded " that Bakewellian improvement which their sheep 

 {i.e. Lincoln Longwools) have received." They were well 

 known to the metropolitan butchers as " Lincolns," and still 

 better as " Dutch." 



An interesting account of a large herd of these Lincoln- 

 shire Shorthorns, bred for many years on the same holding, at 

 Ewerby, is given in Arthur Young's Agricultural Survey of 

 Lincolnshire, and this type of cattle seems to have prevailed all 

 over the country in the early part of last century. Here and 

 there, however, were other varieties. Arthur Young mentions 

 several herds of Longhorns, and says that many graziers liked 

 to cross them with the Lincolnshire cattle, thinking that the 

 mixed breed would feed better on poor land. Here and there, 

 too, were herds of the improved Durham Shorthorns, and also 

 of Holderness cattle, whilst round about the middle of the 

 county a superior breed of dun-coloured cattle were often met 

 with, which are said to have descended from some Channel 

 Island stock, introduced from Alderney by Sir Charles Buck in 

 the latter part of the eighteenth centurj'. It must not be 

 supposed, however, that nothing had been attempted before 

 Young's or Youatt's time to bring about the improvement of 

 the local breed. The methods of Bakewell, and of the brothers 

 Colling, for the improvement of cattle were already famous, 

 and several Lincolnshire men had set to work upon the local 



