IMPROVED BREEDS. 47 



dominion of the Normans, came the division of the land into the 

 great estates given to the retainers of the Conqueror, and the 

 gradual subdivision and settlement of these estates into farms, 

 the establishment of a tenantry, and after a long time, an 

 improvement in their agriculture. There was little intercourse 

 among the people belonging to different localities. Roads were 

 few and bad; for some centuries, the tenants mostly paid their 

 rent in kind. Of the cattle reared on the farms, the surplus 

 were chiefly driven away by dealers who purchased them of the 

 farmer at his own door, or at the neighboring cattle fair. The 

 home herds were thus localized, and became indigenous to the 

 soils on which they were reared. Hence breeds were gradually 

 established in different districts, or localities, although their pecu- 

 liarities may have followed them from remote periods, or been 

 introduced from abroad. So they descended, and we hear little 

 of them, or their improvement, until a late period in the history 

 of British agriculture. 



Early after the year 1700, when Great Britain had become 

 one of the first commercial nations, her commerce whitening 

 every sea, and her foreign conquests and colonial settlements 

 reaching various quarters of the globe, her manufactures become 

 a source of great national wealth, and the enclosure of her 

 waste lands and the highest improvement of her acres had 

 become indispensable to the welfare of the people, we begin to 

 hear of the improvement of her breeds of cattle. Many papers 

 and books have been written about these breeds by various 

 authors, some in the last century, and more in the present. 

 Among all the authors, Youatt, the most elaborate, and discrimi- 

 nating in races, and breeds, together with the compilations of 

 their several histories so far as he could find them has been 

 the chief. This author, a man of education and a Veterinary 

 Surgeon, living in the vicinity of London, was employed by 

 "The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" to com- 



