CHARACTERISTICS 175 



It may be said that the early written history does not even 

 speculate upon its cause. It is known that this characteristic 

 was preferred by the English buyers who, since a time soon 

 after the union of the crowns of England and Scotland in 

 1603, have carried four- or five-year-old bullocks of the 

 Galloway breed to finish in the rich pastures of Leicester and 

 Northampton, the salt marshes of Cambridge, and the adjoin- 

 ing counties, especially Norfolk and Suffolk. The injury 

 which half-wild cattle with horns were capable of inflicting 

 upon one another, and possibly upon the men in charge of 

 them, during a walk of some hundreds of miles, seems to be 

 a sufficient excuse for the preference of the southern drovers 

 for the condition of hornlessness, which was taken into their 

 calculations in the purchase of their droves, a higher price 

 being given to secure it. 



The Galloway and the West Highland breeds are uni- 

 versally considered to be descended from the same original 

 stock ; but although in type of body they are much alike, there 

 are no sufficient historical grounds for the belief. The former 

 are said to be " Highlanders without the horns." This, 

 if true, would associate them directly with the wild forest 

 cattle. West Highland crosses by a Galloway bull 

 have been put with pure-bred Galloways, and the best 

 judges of Galloway cattle have been unable to distinguish 

 the crosses from the pure specimens. As already noted, 

 the corresponding Highland cross is easily distinguished by 

 the colour and coarse quality of its hair, showing that there 

 is a greater difference between the pure breeds referred to 

 than is usually supposed. 



Galloway bulls possess great power of stamping certain 

 characters upon their crossed descendants. With a cow of 

 almost any other breed, with the exception of the Shorthorn, 

 the offspring is almost invariably black, and " with cows of 

 different horned breeds, almost without exception, the 

 offspring is polled." James Little, Tower of Sark, put a 

 Galloway bull to a good herd of Cumberland (non-pedi- 

 gree) Shorthorn cows. The produce were all hornless and 

 blue-grey, but some of them with white patches. The 

 following year an Angus bull was used, but the results were 

 not nearly so uniform. Some were roan and several had 

 horns. The difference may be mainly attributed to the 



