CHAPTER IV. 



QUALITY, CONDITION, AND APPEARANCE OF OUR NATIVE CATTLE 



To arrive at a full understanding of the varied character 

 which our American cattle present to a discriminating eye, we 

 must know something of the prevailing breeds of the several 

 European localities from which their progenitors were derived. 

 For the present, we leave out the Spanish cattle of Mexico, as 

 they are localized only in the far South-west, and do not com- 

 prise any considerable portion of our ordinary herds. They are 

 now driven into the upper States, in few numbers, only for 

 slaughter, and are not recognized as belonging to our "native" 

 stock. 



The Dutch settlers of New York brought their first cattle 

 from Holland. Those cattle then, as now, were distinctive in 

 their appearance, of fair size, roughly formed, black and white 

 mostly, in color, with red occasionally intermixed; short, stubbed, 

 and crumpled in the horn ; good milkers, and generally useful ani- 

 mals. These cattle, for many years, followed the Dutch settle- 

 ments along up the valley of the Hudson river and its tributaries, 

 and became the chief stock of those localities. 



We know little of the early cattle of Virginia, only that they 

 came from the "West Indies, and England; but as the eastern sec- 

 tions of the State were not a pastoral country, cattle were only a 

 secondary interest in the agriculture of the people, and little 

 attention was paid to their improvement. The Swedes brought 

 some cattle with them into Delaware of what character we are 

 uninformed but as they were soon superceded by the English, 



