256 THE BREEDS OF LIVE-STOCK 



cultural Society of England, Vol. 5, page 43, and was 

 afterwards copied into the Transactions of the New York 

 State Agricultural Society in 1850, and into Volume I of 

 the Herd Register of the American Jersey Cattle Club. 

 It forms the basis of our knowledge of the early history of 

 Channel island cattle. When Channel island cattle were 

 first exported to Great Britain, they were collectively 

 called Alderneys, because vessels plying between the 

 Channel islands and Great Britain cleared from the port 

 of Alderney. The cattle were actually very largely from 

 the island of Jersey, since that is the largest island and 

 contains the most cattle. The local government of the 

 Channel islands is administered through two municipali- 

 ties, the one, the states of Jersey, comprising the island 

 of Jersey alone; the other, the states of Guernsey, com- 

 prising Guernsey and the other inhabited islands, of which 

 Alderney is one. For more than a century there has been 

 no intercommunication of cattle from outside the islands 

 or between the two municipalities themselves. This has 

 been one of the agencies in the establishment of the two 

 breeds, Jersey and Guernsey, which are now and have 

 been for many years sufficiently distinct so as to be readily 

 recognized. Alderney is in no sense an agricultural island, 

 and the few cattle on the island are kept merely as family 

 cows by the inhabitants. They come, of course, from 

 Guernsey, and are of that breed. There has never been a 

 distinct breed known as Alderneys, and the name " Alder- 

 ney " has been more commonly applied to Jersey than to 

 Guernsey cattle. 



295. Early history. The origin of the Jersey breed is 

 conjectural, but it is probably the same as the original 

 breed of Normandy. The earliest writers on the cattle of 

 this Island assert that they were superior to those of Nor- 



