TIIE HOLSTEIXS. 167 



color, indicate that they may have sprung from a common 

 source ; but there is a sufficient distinction between them to show 

 that, for centuries past, they have been bred for somewhat dif- 

 ferent uses, by different nationalities, and under a different 

 system of agriculture. 



We need not go into the various past controversies, and sup- 

 positions, touching upon the importation of Dutch cattle into 

 England, for the purpose of improving the English short-horns, 

 nor the counter importation of English short-horns into Hoi- 

 stein, or North Holland, to improve their own native stock. 

 Of the facts relating to these controversies, little is positively 

 known, and the traditions, and suppositions, connected with 

 them, are of such uncertain authority, as to lead to no accurate 

 result, if we should attempt their investigation. We are con- 

 tent to let the matter rest on the one indisputable fact, that the 

 improved "Dutch" cattle of the present day, in many of their 

 characteristics, do possess so great a resemblance to the short- 

 horns, that no wide stretch of imagination need be exercised to 

 presume that the progenitors of each many centuries ago 

 may have been traced to a common ancestry. 



Of the time, at which any very considerable improvement was 

 attempted in th< Holstein cattle, we have no definite knowl- 

 edge. It must have been more than a century perhaps two 

 or three centuries ago, as it is only by a continuous and fixed 

 system of breeding, for a long time, that the undeviating, consti- 

 tutional characteristics of any breed of cattle can become so 

 established as to transmit them with entire certainty to their 

 progeny. These characteristics, the present improved Holstein 

 cattle do obviously possess, in a sufficient degree to class them as 

 a breed by themselves ; and as such, we shall treat them. 



Their surpassing excellence appears to be in their milking 

 qualities, coupled with large size, and a compact, massive frame, 

 capable of making good beef; and in the oxen, strong, laboring 



