428 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
improvement, other than was effected by special attention to 
useful properties in stock selected for breeding. These breeds 
may have been as good many centuries ago as they are now, and 
of the same type in times long past as at the present day.’ 
On the other hand, we cannot but agree with the opinion 
expressed by Professor Owen (re Chartley cattle), but which we 
think is applicable to all the white herds, namely, that they 
are descended from domestic, or rather domesticated cattle, 
introduced by the Romans, which became half-wild from breeding 
together for many years in an unreclaimed state. 
We may take it as settled that the Urus had projecting horns 
and a self-coloured dark coat with a stripe of white along the back. 
Now in the old Craven breed of Longhorns, the horns projected 
almost horizontally, though the present English Longhorns have 
long spreading and sometimes drooping horns. Though the colour 
of the breed varies a good deal, there is always the white mark 
along the back. Some of the Irish cattle also, which two or 
three decades ago were so largely brought to this country as 
stores, were identified by the long white mark along the back; so 

1 Sir Ernest Clarke, the Secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of 
England, in delivering a series of lectures on Agricultural History before 
the University of Cambridge in 1899, is reported, in the second of the 
series, to have discussed in detail the question of the breeding and fattening 
of live stock in the latter part of the 17th century, and to have adduced 
evidence to show that the carcases slaughtered at Smithfield were not, as 
stated by M‘Culloch, and, on his authority, by Macaulay, ‘‘ diminutive” 
as compared with the present day. He showed, according to the résumé in 
our hands, that M‘Culloch had quoted from Sir Frederic Eden, Eden from 
Sir John Sinclair, and that none of them had appreciated the exact signifi- 
cance of tables compiled by the famous economist, Charles Davenant, in a 
rare pamphlet of 1710 in the British Museum. Asa matter of fact, there 
was reason for thinking that the carcases sold at Smithfield in 1710 were 
as heavy as those of the present day; though they did not, of course, 
‘“eut up” so well as those of modern times. One of the great aims of the 
famous breeder Bakewell was to ‘‘ get beasts to weigh where you want them 
to weigh” in the roasting instead of the boiling pieces ; and the object of 
all rearers of cattle had been to get shape rather than size, and quality 
rather than quantity. Instances were given from books of the period, 
and especially from Defoe’s Tours, as to the size of oxen and sheep of 
the day, and the lecturer concluded this part of his subject by stating 
that those who fondly clung to old traditions might, he thought, console 
themselves that ‘‘ the roast beef of old England” was not absolutely a myth. 

