50 Devon Cattle. 



years old, worked till four, five, or six, and then fed for the 

 butcher. Lord Somerville, the great authority on this breed, 

 states that after being worked lightly on the hills for two years 

 they were bought at four years by the tillage farmer of the 

 vales, and worked hard for a further two years and then fed 

 oflP. The usual team for a plough was four oxen or six growing 

 steers. 



The oxen when fat at this age reached great weights, and 

 some of the largest weights ever obtained for this breed were 

 for the large, full-grown working oxen of the old Somersetshire 

 variety. It is nowadays the practice to improve the quality 

 and to produce a greater return of weight per acre, rather than 

 of weight per head. 



There was a period of great degeneration in this breed. It 

 started at the beginning of last century. This degeneration 

 was apparently due to the very high price of beef during the 

 wars, and farmers were tempted to sell even their best cows 

 and heifers to the butchers. At that time, as at the present, 

 their aptitude to fatten was such that milk cows in autumn 

 were fit for slaughter. Then again, the high qualities of the 

 breed were beginning to be realised by farmers in other 

 counties, with the result that herds were started in new districts, 

 and prices consequently rose to figures that in those days were 

 considered enormous. With this drain on the best that the 

 county could produce the high quality of the breed naturally 

 suffered, and a class of inferior stock sprang up in the very 

 strongholds which before had been held by a most superior 

 breed. It was also at this time that farmers were attracted by 

 the high price of corn, and turned their attention specially to 

 arable land farming. 



Fortunately for the breed, there were still farmers in Devon 

 who were justly proud of their native cattle. Unlike their 

 shortsighted neighbours they held on to and did not sell their 

 best, even though they were offered excessive prices for them. 

 These men retained the animals whose excellence they had 

 spent such pains in producing, and handed them down to their 

 descendants. The name of Francis Quartly, of Holland, will 

 always be associated with the turn of the tide in the progi-ess 

 of the Devon cattle. It was in 171^4 that he turned his energy 

 to the improvement of the breed. Not only did he refuse to 

 sell his best, but he often outbid the butchers for the high class 

 stock of less far-seeing breeders. By breeding from and 

 intermingling their stock with his own he built up the famous 

 Champson herd. It is no exaggeration to say that the influence 

 of this herd reversed the current of events, and the tide in the 

 affairs of the Devon breed, which had long been on the ebb, 

 once again began to flow. 



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