66 CATTLE SHORTHORNS 



that of letting bulls out on hire for a season or more, according 

 to contract, to distant parts of the British Isles a practice 

 which has been acknowledged to be of much advantage 

 when the system of close-breeding is adopted. It also gives 

 a breeder a chance of keeping for his own use bulls that 

 develop qualities on maturing which they do not show at 

 the early age at which they are usually sold. 



Thomas Booth, the originator of the Booth group of 

 Shorthorns, made one essential difference in his practices as 

 compared with Bates and some other earlier improvers. He 

 selected the best types of ordinary non-pedigreed Shorthorn 

 cows, which he found in Darlington market, to mate with his 

 moderate-sized, strongly bred Colling bulls of Hubback 

 descent. They were described as " fine cattle ; good dairy 

 cows, and great grazers when dry ; somewhat incompact in 

 form and steerish in appearance, but of very robust constitu- 

 tion." He put " substance ahead of points of less practical 

 importance, and from the first regarded flesh-making capacity 

 and breadth of back and loin of more value than a persistent 

 flow of milk." Richard Booth, who leased Studley in 1814, 

 declared that " four crosses of really first-rate bulls of sterling 

 blood upon a good market cow of the ordinary Shorthorn 

 breed should suffice for the production of an animal with all 

 the characteristics of the high-caste Shorthorn." 



Admirable judgment akin to genius was displayed in 

 mating the various units of the herd to secure the ideal 

 which Thos. Booth, like every other successful breeder, aimed 

 at. Defects were gradually eliminated and desirable charac- 

 teristics established. Uniformity of type came with the later 

 concentration of blood by the use of home-bred bulls. The 

 breeding animals were fed in an ordinary way at pasture in 

 its season, and on natural hay during the winter months. 

 The herd was kept well before the public by numerous prizes 

 taken at public shows. At that time the wasteful methods 

 of overfeeding show and sale cattle did not drain, as it does 

 now, too much of the best female blood from the stocks of 

 successful exhibitors, and endanger or weaken the breeding 

 power of many of the males. The Colling bulls he used at 

 first demonstrated the fact among Booth cattle that strongly- 

 bred sires often get their best stock from cows not bred " in 

 line." The Booths maintained they got their best results by 



